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CHURCH AND STATE 



UNITED STATES. 



CHURCH AND STATE 



UNITED STATES; 



AN APPENDIX ON THE GERMAN POPULATION. 



PA r 



JOSEPH P. THOMPSON. 







BOSTON: 4 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 

BERLIN : 
LEONHARD SIMION. 

IS73. 



■Ts~ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Boston : 
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, A very t &° Co. 



American's who may read this hook will have the 
. goodness to hear in mind that it was originally ad- 
dressed to foreigners, who have little knowledge, and 
perhaps less appreciation, of American ideas and 
institutions ; and that it should he regarded as a 
rudimentary essay upon topics with which Americans 
may he presumed to he familiar. Every student of 
European life and opinions will readily comprehend 
how important it is to correct the misapprehensions, 
and to counteract the prejudices, which exist in even 
the hest informed circles of Europe concerning 
American society,^ and how patient and toilsome 
such a work must he. The coarse display of money, 
the crude boasting of material -greatness, the swagger- 
ing assertion of an independence which is hut another 

* By the liberality of the Hon. Marshall 0. Roberts of New York, 
one thousand copies of the German edition were placed at the dis- 
posal of the author for complimentary distribution to leading clergy- 
men, to members of parliament, and to professors in the universities. 

3 



name for ignorance, have done much to excite in 
such circles a distaste for American character, and a 
disrelish for American ideas. 

The best of America is too little known in Europe, 
— her development in science, art, and literature ; 
her devotion to the Christian ideal in society and in 
the state; and her growth in that broad and noble 
culture which should best thrive in the generous soil 
of freedom. It is the quiet exhibition of such fruits 
of national life, the cogent array of facts which illus- 
trate the product of principles and institutions in the 
higher civilization, that must rectify the opinion of 
Europe concerning America, and compel the respect 
of her statesmen and her scholars. If Europeans are 
apt to assume for their several nations a higher cul- 
ture than will endure the test of honest and thorough 
criticism, Americans too often fail to appreciate the 
best constituents of their own worth as a nation, or 
to secure for these the estimate that they deserve. 

The ideal of American culture should represent the 
catholicity of the Christian conjoined with the in- 
flexibility of the Puritan, the cosmopolitanism of the 
man conjoined with the loyalty of the patriot, the 
courtesy and dignity of the gentleman conjoined with 
the fervor of the orator and the modesty of the schol- 
ar. Eor many years it was my felicity to have before 
me this ideal in the intimacy of a most sacred friend- 



ship ; and, as I write, the name so deeply embedded 
in my heart rises spontaneously to my lips. To 

WILLIAM IVES BUDINGTON 

I dedicate this attempt to vindicate the principles 
which he has embodied in his life, and to illustrate 
the sentiments which I have so often heard him 
express. 

If this essay, to which I was compelled by the 
pressure of circumstances in Germany and by the 
impulses of Christian patriotism, shall help to com- 
mend the United States of the New World to the 
United Germany of the Old, and to further a good 
understanding between these two mightiest represen- 
tatives of Reformed Christianity, I am sure there is 
no one whose encouragement will be more generous 
and ample than his, or more grateful and rewarding 
to 

HIS LOVING AND ADMIRING FRIEND. 



PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION, 



In publishing this little treatise, the author has no 
thought of discussing the relations of Church and 
State in Germany. A stranger should not meddle 
with the internal questions of a foreign country; and 
one who has enjoyed hospitality as a guest assuredly 
will not volunteer to advise his host how to regulate 
his household. But, in these days of international 
courtesies, each nation has something to contribute 
toward the general welfare of humanity; and the 
experience of the United States in the solution of 
great social problems may suggest principles and 
methods to other nations engaged in the solution of 
the same problems under somewhat different condi- 
tions. 

This essay grew out of a conversation in a circle 
of learned, devout, and patriotic Germans, who re- 
quested that the information then communicated 

7 



8 PREFACE TO GERMAN EDITION. 

touching the relations of Church and State in the 
United States should be put in writing for publica- 
tion in the German language. Afterwards the author 
was requested to compile the ecclesiastical laws and 
usages of the United States for the use of an officer 
of the Imperial Government, whose' name is no less 
honored in America than in Germany. 5 * 

Copies of this manuscript were submitted to several 
gentlemen of official standing in Germany for com- 
ment and inquiry; and, to meet their queries, the 
whole was rewritten, with a view to a comprehensive 
and complete, though condensed, presentation of the 
subject. 

Eor the neat, discriminating, and accurate transla- 
tion of the essay into German, the author is indebted 

* Prince Bismarck being absent at Varzin on furlough, etiquette 
forbade that he should sign official papers written during this inter- 
val; but he dictated the following note, sent under the seal of the 
Foreign Office, which was written by his Excellency Baron von 
Balan, formerly minister of Germany to Belgium, and now acting 

State Secretary for Foreign Affairs : — 

Berlin, Aug. 23, 1872. 
Reverend Sir, —You had the kindness to give Dr. Hepke, about a 
month ago, an exposition, written by yourself, on Churcn and State in 
the United States. The work was forwarded to Varzin; and Prince 
Bismarck now desires me to express to you his warmest thanks for the 
very valuable information which you have put at his disposal, and which 
he read with great interest. 

I have the honor to be, sir, 

Your obedient servant, 

BALAN. 
The Rev. Dr. Jos. P. Thompson, Berlin. 



PREFACE TO GERMAN EDITION. 9 

to the courtesy of his friend, Dr. Med. Curth. # The 
phase of the ecclesiastico-political problem through 
which Germany is passing is watched with intensest 
interest in the United States. Once more has the 
Reformation come to the front in a struggle with 
Rome, that must powerfully affect the future of Chris- 
tianity in the entire world. Germany stands to-day, 
as she stood in the sixteenth century, the bulwark of 
freedom and of faith, the light of knowledge and 
of truth. May he whose name shall stand in history 
as the first sovereign of the new Germanic empire, 
and who to-day receives the congratulations of a 
grateful people upon his seventy-sixth birthday, live 
to see the unity which he has established perfected 
and secured against every enemy from within and 

from without ! 

THE AUTHOR. 

Berlin, March 22, 1873, 

(The Emperor Wilhelm's birthday.) 

* The translation is so clear and so elegant, that the author rec- 
ommends Americans who read German to consult it for a good 
style. 



CHURCH AND STATE 



UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA. 



SECTION I. 

§ 1. Provisions of the Constitution and the Laios 
of the United States concerning Religion. — The 
Constitution of the United States of North Ameri- 
ca declares that " no religious test shall ever be 
required as a qualification to any office or public 
trust under the United States " (Art. VI. § 3) ; 
and also that " Congress shall make no law re- 
specting an establishment of religion, or prohib- 
iting the free exercise thereof " (Amend. L). 

§ 2. Religious Liberty more than Toleration. — 
These two articles embody all that is contained 
in the National Constitution upon the subject of 
religion ; but, brief as they are, they proclaim 
religious liberty, in the broadest sense, as a fun- 

li 



12 CHURCH AND STATE 

damental right of citizens of the United States. 
This means much more than the toleration by law 
of differences of religious belief and of different 
modes of worship. The civil government is not 
to inquire into any man's belief as affecting his 
qualifications for office, nor to concern itself either 
for the support or the hinderance of any form of 
religion. Toleration denotes neither the freedom 
of religion from State control, nor the equality 
of all religions before the law : on the contrary, 
it implies either a preference by the State for 
some one form of faith or worship, though other 
forms are allowed ; or the right of the State to 
regulate the administration of ecclesiastical affairs 
by the civil law. In the etymological sense, tol- 
eration is the allowance of that which is not 
wholly approved ; and, in the ecclesiastical sense, 
it means specifically the allowance of religious 
opinions, and modes of worship, in a State when 
contrary to or different from those of the estab- 
lished church or belief. Toleration is a conces- 
sion, in part, of that control over religion which 
the State assumes to exercise, but which it so far 
allows to fall into abeyance. Religious liberty, 
on the other hand, is absolute freedom of religious 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 13 

opinion and worship, a vested right of conscience, 
not derived through any grant of the civil power. 

The British Government affords a good exam- 
ple of the spirit of toleration. While it still 
upholds the Church of England as the Established 
Church of the nation, and a part of the " Consti- 
tution" of the kingdom, it tolerates all forms 
of dissent, and, of late years, has removed from 
Catholics, Dissenters, and Jews most of the 
disabilities which in former times adhered to sub- 
jects who were not within the pale of the Estab- 
lishment. In Scotland, where the Established 
Church is Presbyterian, the clergy of the Church 
of England become, in turn, Dissenters. But 
in the United States there can be no Dissenters, 
for there is no Establishment ; and no mere tol- 
eration of beliefs, since no one faith, sect, ,or reli- 
gion, is preferred as a standard, but all religious 
faiths and forms are alike equal and valid before 
the law. 

Liberty of opinion, liberty of worship, liberty 
in all matters pertaining to religion, is not a 
privilege created or conceded by the State, but is 
a right inherent in the personality of the individ- 
ual conscience ; and the State is pledged not to 



14 CHURCH AND STATE 

interfere with that right. Such is the theory of 
the National Constitution. 

§ 3. Laws of Particular States upon Religion. 
— The constitutions of some of the particular 
States require a belief in the being of a God, 
and in a future state of rewards and punish- 
ments, as a qualification for holding civil office, 
and for testifying in a court of justice ; but this 
condition is fast falling into disuse. The States 
of North Carolina and Maryland have lately 
modified it ; and other States, in revising their 
constitutions, have abolished all religious tests. 
The constitution of the State of New Jersey 
declares that " there shall be no establishment 
of one religious sect in preference to another ; 
no religious test shall be required as a qualifica- 
tion for any office or public trust ; and no per- 
son shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil 
right on account of his religious principles." 
The tendency of other State constitutions, if 
not their positive tone, is to the same effect. 

In all the several States the establishment of 
any form of religion is forbidden, either in 
express terms of the constitution, or by positive 
enactments, or by a sentiment and practice 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 15 

which have the force of common law. Perfect 
religious liberty requires not only that every 
man shall be free to exercise his own faith 
(provided this does not disturb the peace nor 
injure the morals of society), but also that no 
one shall be taxed in any form to support the 
religion of another. An analysis of their con- 
stitutions, and of the codes which have grown 
out of them, shows that the following things 
are not lawful in any of the States of the 
American Union : — 

" 1. Any law respecting an establishment of 
religion. 

" 2. Compulsory support, by taxation or 
otherwise, of religious instruction. 

" 3. Compulsory attendance upon religious 
worship. 

" 4. Restraints upon the free exercise of re- 
ligion according to the dictates of the con- 
science. 

" 5. Restraints upon the expression of reli- 
gious belief." (See Judge Cooley upon " Con- 
stitutional Limitations," p. 469.) 

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, adopted since the 



16 CHURCH AND STATE 

war of the Rebellion, may be fairly construed 
to forbid any State to impose upon its citizens 
a religious test for political office, so far forth 
as the Congress of the United States can have 
power over the legislation of particular States 
in such a matter. That article declares that 
a no State shall make or enforce any law which 
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of 
citizens of the United States " (Amend. XIV. 
§ 1) ; and further, that " when the right to vote 
at any election, for the choice of electors for 
President and Vice-President of the United 
States, representatives in Congress, the execu- 
tive and judicial officers of a State, or the 
members of the legislature thereof, is denied 
to any of the male inhabitants of such State 
(being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of 
the United States), or in any way abridged 
except for participation in rebellion or other 
crime, the basis of representation therein shall 
be reduced in the proportion which the number 
of such male citizens shall bear to the whole 
number of male citizens twenty-one years of 
age in said State " (Amend. XIV. § 2). 

The right of the United States, under its 



IJST THE UNITED STATES. 17 

restricted powers, to interdict a particular 
State from disfranchising any portion of its 
citizens, might be questioned ; but the penalty 
of such a proscription is, that the State is made 
to disfranchise itself in the same ratio in which 
it disfranchises its citizens. The primary 
design of this amendment was to secure the 
fruits of emancipation, and to protect the 
freedmen from arbitrary legislation in any of 
the States. But the principle of the article is 
as sweeping as are the claims of citizenship. It 
is forbidden " to make or enforce any law which 
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of 
citizens of the United States." Now, the Con- 
stitution of the United States declares the abso- 
lute immunity of the citizen from religious tests 
for civil office, or places of public trust ; and, 
should any particular State impose such a test 
upon candidates for office within its bounds, it 
is highly probable that the Supreme Court of 
the United States would decide that such an 
abridgment of the privileges of the citizen was 
a violation of the spirit of the Fourteenth 
Amendment of the National Constitution, and 
therefore void. But no conflict upon this point 



18 CHURCH AND STATE 

is ever likely to arise. It is more probable that 
the States which have hitherto retained a reli- 
gious test for office will either abolish it, or 
suffer it to fall into desuetude. The unanimous 
sentiment of the people of the United States is 
that the State is not an ecclesiastical, nor a 
politico-ecclesiastical corporation, but, in its es- 
sence, is a political organism. " It belongs to 
American liberty to separate entirely from the 
political government the institution which has 
for its object the support and diffusion of 
religion." — Lieber on Civil Liberty, chap. x. 
p. 99. 

§ 4. Religio7i not a Shield for Vice or Treason. 
— Though the theory of political societj^ in the. 
United States recognizes and guarantees lib- 
erty of conscience as one of the primordial 
rights of man, yet no one can be permitted to 
use his religion as a cover for vices and crimes 
against society, or for treason against the gov- 
ernment. Such freedom of religion would 
place the community at the mercy of fanaticism 
or superstition ; would license Thuggism, and 
restore the Inquisition. Though no form of 
religious belief or worship, simply as such, can 



IN TEE UNITED STATES. 19 

justly be proscribed in a free state, yet for 
reasons of public morality, or for the safety 
and order of the Commonwealth, the State may 
forbid and punish acts done in the name of 
religion ; as, for instance, polygamy as prac- 
tised by the Mormons, the infanticide of the 
Chinese, or the self-immolation of Hindoo 
devotees. And upon the same grounds, though 
not as being in any sense the agent of the 
Church, or as having any religious function, the 
State may enact laws for the general welfare, 
which have also, in other relations, the sanction 
of religion. Thus, for example, the basis of 
the State is the family, — the true norm of 
society; and in Western civilization, as con- 
trasted with the Oriental, society is based upon 
monogamy. Though marriage is treated by the 
laws of the United States as a civil contract, it 
is also regarded by the people at large as an 
institution of religion, and is commonly cele- 
brated with religious rites ; each and every sect 
being authorized by the laws to constitute the 
marriage relation according to its own usages, 
from the simple declaration of the Quaker to 
the sacred ceremonial of the Catholic. But, 



20 CHURCH AND STATE 

whatever the mode, the civil law determines 
the conditions which give to marriage its 
validity, and designates the civil and ecclesiasti- 
cal officers by whom marriage may be solem- 
nized, and the formalities to be observed in 
order to its legal consummation. No church- 
officer can legally officiate at a marriage, unless 
he is authorized so to do by the law of the 
State ; and, in thus officiating, the clergyman, 
equally with the civil magistrate, must conform 
in every particular to the requirements of the 
law. This service is not a prerogative of his 
office, nor a function of churchly authority; but 
the clergyman is, quoad hoc, an officer of the 
State. The record of marriages is usually kept 
at a State office. A valid marriage can be con- 
summated without any religious service what- 
ever. The State regulates divorce ; and, from 
regard to the well-being of society, it permits 
only monogamy, and treats bigamy and adul- 
tery as crimes. 

Now, the Mormons, on the one hand, have 
established polygamy as an article of their 
religion ; and, on the other, the Free-Lovers 
claim the right of a mutable sexual alliance as 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 21 

a part of their personal liberty.' But here the 
State steps in, and says, " Marriage has conse- 
quences that affect the welfare of the whole 
community. It implies parentage and off- 
spring ; and the State cannot permit relations 
between the sexes which may throw upon the 
community the care of children whose parents 
make no provision for the family and the home." 
And so, by that law of self-protection which 
inheres in society, as well as by that moral 
sense which justifies monogamy, the State can 
legislate against polygamy and fornication, 
though practised in the name of religion. 

The moral functions of the State will be 
discussed in a subsequent section. These are 
alluded to here simply as qualifying the princi- 
ple of religious liberty, or rather as guarding 
against its perversion. The State is not di- 
vorced from morality when separated from the 
Church ; and the liberty of religion is not the 
license of immorality. 

§ 5. Judge Story on Religious Liberty. — The 
grounds of the article cited from the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, prohibiting an eccle- 
siastical establishment, are thus clearly stated 



22 CHURCH AND STATE 

by the former Judge Story, one of the ablest 
expounders of American law, who knew per- 
sonally some of the framers of the Constitution : 
" It was under a solemn consciousness of the 
dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry 
of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, 
exemplified in our domestic as well as in foreign 
annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude 
from the National Government all power to act 
upon the subject. The situation, too, of the 
different States, equally' proclaimed the policy, 
as well as the necessity, of such an exclusion. 
In some of the States, Episcopalians constituted 
the predominant sect ; in others, Presbyterians ;. 
in others, Congregationalists ; in others, Qua- 
kers ; and in others, again, there was a close 
numerical rivalry among contending sects. It 
was impossible that there should not arise per- 
petual strife and perpetual jealousy on the 
subject of ecclesiastical ascendency, if the 
National Government were left free to create 
a religious establishment. The only security 
was in extirpating the power. But this alone 
would have been an imperfect security, if it 
had not been followed up by a declaration of 



m THE UNITED STATES. 23 

the right of the free exercise of religion, and a 
prohibition of all religious tests. Thus the 
whole power oyer the subject of religion is left 
exclusively to the State governments, to be 
acted upon, according to their own sense of 
justice, under the State constitutions ; and the 
Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and 
the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit 
down at the common table of the national coun- 
cils, without any inquisition into their faith, or 
mode of worship." — -Story on the Constitution, 
§ 1879. 

§ 6. Mormons, Chinese, and Jesuits. — In 
point of fact, a Roman Catholic has been Chief 
Justice of the United-States Supreme Court ; a 
Jew has had a seat in the Senate ; and a noted 
champion of the " Religion of Reason " against 
revealed Christianity has been a member of the 
House of Representatives. Since Judge Story 
wrote the above, the Mormons with their reli- 
gious sanction of polygamy, and the Chinese 
with their heathen practices, have become quite 
numerous in the United States. Are these also 
eligible to office under the National Govern- 
ment ? This depends primarily upon the fact 



24 CHURCH AND STATE 

of citizenship. Formerly the distinction be- 
tween the citizen and the elector was much 
broader than can now be maintained since the 
adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment of the 
Constitution. Some States required that an 
elector should possess a certain amount of prop- 
erty ; others that he must sustain a good moral 
character ; others that he should be able to 
read; and some made distinctions between citi- 
zens of different races and colors. The Su- 
preme Court of the United States once decided 
that citizenship means nothing more than 
residence ; and also that " a free negro of the 
African race, whose ancestors were brought to 
this country and sold as slaves, is not a citizen 
within the meaning of the Constitution " (Dred 
Scott vs. Sanford, 19 How, 393). But after 
slavery had been abolished by the war, in order 
to protect the former slaves against a curtail- 
ment of their liberty by State legislation, and 
to secure to them the right to vote, the Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments were added 
to the Constitution, which aim to establish uni- 
form and impartial suffrage. 

As before said, it was questionable whether 



m THE UNITED STATES. 25 

the Congress of the United States had the 
right to enforce upon the several States a uni- 
form law of suffrage. The American political 
system holds fast by two principles, — local self- 
government so far as this is possible, and a 
National Government of prescribed powers for 
the common welfare. Like the centripetal and 
centrifugal forces, or the foci of an ellipse, these 
two principles provide equally against centrali- 
zation and disintegration. Having in view 
these principles, the new amendments declare 
that "all persons born or naturalized in the 
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction 
thereof, are citizens of the United States and 
of the State where they reside ; " and that " the 
right of citizens of the United States to vote 
shall not be denied or abridged by the United 
States on account of race, color, or previous 
condition of servitude." 

These declarations are peremptory ; for they 
lie within the scope of the National Govern- 
ment. But, in addition to these, the Fourteenth 
Amendment, without coercing the States, pre- 
sents a powerful motive to adopt impartial suf- 
frage by subjecting any delinquent State to a 



26 CHURCH AND STATE 

loss of representation in the ratio of the citizens 
whom it shall deprive of suffrage. For example : 
Upon the basis of one representative for every 
hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabit- 
ants, the State of New York is entitled to 
thirty-three members of Congress. The State 
might restrict suffrage to persons worth half a 
million of dollars ; but, supposing that there 
are only a hundred and twenty-five thousand 
such persons in the State, New York wouhl 
then be reduced to one member of Congress, 
instead of thirty-three. This penalty of the 
Fourteenth Amendment applies equally to any 
condition or limitation which a State may 
impose upon suffrage, not only to a property 
qualification, but to any requirement of social 
standing, of religious belief, or of moral charac- 
ter, except where the latter is tainted with a 
sentence for crime. If a State should deprive 
Jews and Catholics of the right to vote, its 
own representation in Congress would be re- 
duced in the ratio of the Jewish and Catholic 
male citizens twenty-one years of age to the 
whole number of male citizens twenty-one 
years of age in the State. 



IN TEE UNITED STATES. 27 

Of course, the Mormon by birth or by natu- 
ralization, and the Chinaman by naturalization, 
can become citizens ; and being citizens, then, 
if the spirit of the Constitution is obeyed, they 
could not be excluded from any office under 
the United States upon the ground of their 
religion; though, if their practices under their 
religion were criminal or illegal, this would be 
a disqualification under the general powers of 
Congress to preserve its own purity and the 
purity of the civil service. As "yet, the Mor- 
mons simply occupy territory of the United 
States. Utah has not been constituted a State, 
and could not be admitted as such into the 
Union without first purging itself of polygamy. 

Every public officer must be bound by oath 
to support the Constitution of the United 
States (Art. VI., Sect. 3) ; and a foreigner, in 
order to be naturalized as a citizen of the 
United States, must take oath to support the 
Constitution, and " to renounce and abjure for- 
ever all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign 
prince, potentate, state, and sovereignty what- 
ever," and particularly to that of which he was 
formerly a subject. Under these provisions, a 



28 CHURCH AND STATE 

Jesuit might be debarred from office if it were 
proved that he had sworn allegiance to the 
Pope as his superior sovereign ; for the govern- 
ment of the United States cannot permit a 
double sovereignty upon its soil. The recusant 
Jesuit would be treated as an alien ; but his 
exclusion would not be upon the ground of his 
religion. The Constitution of the United 
States permits no scrutiny of a man's religious 
opinions to the prejudice of his civil rights. 

The ecclesiastical legislation of some of the 
States of the Union grew out of the relation 
of the Colonies to religion before the war of 
Independence in the last century, when the pre- 
vailing notions of the times still favored either 
a Church Establishment, as in Virginia ; or the 
support and regulation of religion by the State, 
as in the quasi establishment of New York ; or 
the administration of the State exclusively by 
members of the church, as in the theocratic 
system of the Colonies of Massachusetts Bay 
and New Haven. That previous colonial his- 
tory, so important to the question of Church 
and State in America, will be considered in the 
following section. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 29 

§ 7. Religious Liberty absolves from no Duties 
to the State. — As early as 1635, Roger Wil- 
liams, the founder of the Rhode-Island Colony, 
who has been called " the Father of Religious 
Liberty," made a vigorous protest against all 
meddling of the civil power with religion. It 
was feared by many that the absolute separa- 
tion of Church and State, and the declaration 
of religious liberty, on the one hand, would 
cause the State to relapse into heathenism ; and, 
on the other, would give occasion to Roman 
Catholics and to fanatics to set up their re- 
ligious obligations against the authority of the 
State, even in matters of civil conduct. These 
objections were met by Williams with a pithy 
illustration, which covers all the principles of 
the case : — 

" There goes many a ship to sea, with many 
hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe 
is common, and is a true picture of a common- 
wealth, or human combination or society. It 
hath fallen out, sometimes, that both Papists and 
Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked 
in one ship : upon which supposal I affirm that 
all the liberty of conscience I ever pleaded for 



30 CHURCH AND STATE 

turns upon these two hinges, — that none of the 
Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to 
come to the ship's prayers or worship, nor com- 
pelled from their own particular prayers or 
worship, if they practise any. I further add, 
that, notwithstanding this liberty, the com- 
mander of the ship ought to command the ship's 
course ; yea, and also command that justice, 
peace, and sobriety be kept and practised both 
among the seamen and all the passengers. If 
any of the seamen refuse to perform their ser- 
vice, or passengers tp pay their freight ; if any 
refuse to help in person or purse towards the 
common charges or defence ; if any refuse to 
obey the common laws and orders of the ship 
concerning their common peace or preserva- 
tion ; if any shall mutiny, and rise up against 
then: commanders and officers ; if any should 
preach or write that there ought to be no com- 
manders or officers, because all are equal in 
Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no laws 
nor orders, no corrections nor punishments, — 
in such cases the commander or commanders 
may judge, resist, compel, and punish such trans- 
gressors according to their deserts and merits." 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 31 

The principle that the State should not med- 
dle in matters of religion, or that the Church 
shall be free, gives the Church no pretext to set 
itself above the State or against the State in 
matters of civil administration. Religious lib- 
erty stands equally opposed to political bigotry 
and to social anarchy. A free Church in a free 
State does not mean an imperium in imperio ; 
much less the erection within a State, and under 
the charter of its liberties, of the vice-royalty of 
a foreign power to work against the State. 



32 CHURCH AND STATE 



SECTION II. 

THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE 
BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, 

§ 1. The early colonial history of North 
America presents problems in the religious and 
social life of the people which perplex a for- 
eigner. Hence even such studious and candid 
authors as Dr. H. F. Uhden ("The New- 
England Theocracy ") and Dr. J. Riittimann 
(" Kirche und Staat in Nordamerika ") have 
fallen into some serious, though very natural 
and pardonable, misapprehensions. Thus Dr. 
Riittimann (" Erster Abschnitt ") ascribes to 
the Puritan spirit in New England measures 
of severity against other confessions, which 
were due rather to the spirit of the age, and 
which were to be found equally in the Episco- 
palian Colony of Virginia, though there pro- 
ceeding from the opposite extreme of church 
polity. He also overrates the power of the 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 33 

clergy in what Dr. Uhden styles " the New- 
England theocracy ; " though, in point of fact, 
this theocratic government was a peculiarity of 
the Colonies of Massachusetts Bay and of New 
Haven, and terminated in the latter as early as 
A.D. 1665, — twenty-six years after the found- 
ing of the Colony. Such misunderstandings are 
due to the fact that the North- American Colo- 
nies were planted with very different materials, 
and from widely different motives. Leaving 
out of view the Spanish and French settlements, 
the several English Colonies represented quite 
distinct phases of English society, character, 
and religion. In some, the spirit of commercial 
adventure and territorial aggrandizement pre- 
dominated ; in others, the spirit of religious 
faith and of missionary zeal. Some were the 
children of royal patronage ; others, the offspring 
of religious persecution. Three examples of 
these different types of colonial organization 
will serve to illustrate the position of the State 
toward the Church previous to the war of 
American Independence. 

§ 2. The Church established in Virginia. — The 
Colony of Virginia was the first permanent 



34 CHURCH AND STATE 

settlement of Englishmen in North America, 
dating from the planting of Jamestown in 1607. 
The charter of this Colony was vested in a " com- 
pany of adventurers and planters," a commer- 
cial corporation which governed the emigrants 
with a royal authority through a supreme 
council in England and a subordinate colonial 
council of its own appointing. This charter 
enjoined the establishment of religion according 
to the doctrine and usages of the Church of 
England ; and thus the two bulwarks of Eng- 
lish loyalty — an aristocracy and a hierarchy 
— were set up on the soil of Virginia. De- 
votion to the Church was a test of devotion 
to the king, its "head and defender." With 
the growth of the Colony, parishes were 
formed, in each of which a minister of the 
Church of England was instituted by law, and 
endowed with a fixed salary, in tobacco, a glebe, 
house and land. (See " Autobiography of 
Thomas Jefferson," "Notes on Virginia " by the 
same, and the statutes cited in Hoffman's "Law 
of the Church.") 

At the first, under the English Toleration 
Acts of th^t period, Dissenters were allowed 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 35 

their worship under certain restrictions; but 
in each parish all the inhabitants were taxed 
alike for the support of the parochial church 
of the established order. By degrees a spirit 
of intolerance crept in, and religious bigotry 
was inflamed by political animosities. During 
the civil war in England, the Colony of Virginia, 
which now had a legislature of its own, es- 
poused the cause of the "king against Cromwell 
and the Parliament ; and hence adhesion to the 
Established Church was made a test of loyalty 
to the Colonial Government, and nonconformity 
was identified with republicanism and disloyalty. 
The party in power had recourse to religious 
persecution, which, as often happens, had more 
to do with political policy than with questions 
of faith. 

In 1643, the Colonial Legislature decreed 
that no minister should preach or teach, publicly 
or privately, except in conformity to the con- 
stitutions of the Church of England. Puritans 
were banished, and forbidden, under heavy 
penalties, to re-enter the Colony. At a subse- 
quent period, severe enactments were passed 
against Quakers ; and it was even made a penal 



36 CHURCH AND STATE 

offence for any master of a vessel to bring a 
Quaker within the jurisdiction. 

As late as 1705, acts were passed by the Vir- 
ginia Assembly, decreeing that " if a person 
brought up in the Christian religion denies the 
being of a God or the Trinity, asserts that 
there are more gods than one, denies the Chris- 
tian religion to be true, or the Scriptures to be 
of divine authority, he shall be punished, for 
the first offence, by incapacity to hold any office : 
for the second, by disability to sue, to take any 
gift or legacy, and by three years' imprisonment 
without bail." These laws were by no means 
a dead letter. Many worthy Christians were 
thrust into prison for preaching without the 
authorization of the bishop ; and, only two 
years before the war of American Independence, 
there were six Baptists imprisoned in one jail 
in Virginia for publishing their religious senti- 
ments. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Dec- 
laration of Independence, and the third Presi- 
dent of the United States, strongly urged the 
repeal of these acts of intolerance in his native 
State. In 1779, all forced contributions for the 
support of religion in Virginia were abolished, 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 37 

and the Church Establishment was thus set 
aside ; but it was not until the winter of 1785-6 
— ten years after the beginning of the Revolu- 
tion — that an act for establishing religious 
freedom was adopted in Virginia, and the last 
vestige of State and Church was done away. 

This act, with a long argumentative preamble 
upon religious liberty, is given in full in the 
Appendix to Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia" 
(Works, viii. 454) ; but the essence of it is in 
these words : " No man shall be compelled to fre- 
quent or support any religious worship, place, 
or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, 
restrained, molested, or burthened in his body 
or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account 
of his religious opinions or belief ; but all men 
shall be free to profess, and by argument to 
maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, 
and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, 
or affect their civil capacities." 

After almost two centuries of Church Estab- 
lishment, with the varying incidents of tolera- 
tion and persecution, at last, through the 
influence of a civil revolution based upon the 
natural rights of man, Virginia was brought to 



38 CHURCH AND STATE 

declare the inviolability of conscience in religion 
as fundamental to liberty in the State. Reli- 
gious freedom was no crude experiment of an 
abstract theory, but a practical conception de- 
veloped by long experience. In this view the 
testimony of Virginia has the weight of history, 
as well as the wisdom of philosophy. 

§ 3. The Church in New York. — The early 
colonial history of New York presents an ex- 
ample of State provision for the support of 
churches without the rigors of an exclusive 
establishment. New York was at first settled 
by traders from Holland under the name of 
New Amsterdam ; and the Reformed religion, as 
set forth in the doctrine and discipline of the 
Synod of Dort, was naturally maintained by 
the emigrants, the colonial clergy being ap- 
proved and commissioned by the Classis of 
Amsterdam. In 1640, the West-India Com- 
pany, which had the control of the settlement, 
decreed that " no other religion shall be publicly 
admitted in the New Netherlands, except the 
Reformed as it is at present preached and prac- 
tised by public authority in the United Nether- 
lands ; and for this purpose the company shall 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 39 

provide good and suitable preachers, schoolmas- 
ters, and comforters of the sick " (Documents of 
Colonial History, " Holland," i. 123). This was 
intended as a rule of order. But Stuyvesant, a 
noted governor of the Colony, attempted to use 
it as an instrument of oppression and persecu- 
tion. He issued a proclamation (1656) forbid- 
ding preachers from holding conventicles not in 
harmony with the established religion as set 
forth by the Synod of Dort. He persecuted 
Quakers with fine, imprisonment, and banish- 
ment ; but the authorities at Amsterdam re- 
buked the governor for an excess of religious 
zeal, saying, " The consciences of men ought to 
be free so long as they continue moderate and 
peaceable. Such have been the maxims of 
prudence and toleration by which the magis- 
trates of Amsterdam have been governed ; and 
the consequences have been, that the oppressed 
and persecuted from every country have found 
among us an asylum in distress. Follow in the 
same steps, and you will be blessed." Every one 
was to have freedom within his own dwelling, 
to serve God in his own way ; and so the Re- 
formed Church was saved from becoming an 



40 CHURCH AND STATE 

agent of persecution in New Amsterdam, after- 
wards New York. The Colony even became 
an asylum of religious liberty. 

§ 4. New York under the English. — When 
the city was taken by the English, in 1664, it 
was stipulated that the Hollanders should enjoy 
the liberty of their consciences in divine worship 
and church discipline ; and, though the Church 
of England was at once set up by the new 
government in every parish of the Colony, a 
public declaration was also made, that " no per- 
son shall be molested, fined, or imprisoned, for 
differing in judgment in matters of religion, 
who professes Christianity" (Historical Society's 
Collection, i. 332). 

At a later period, however (1686), the at- 
tempt was made to put the Province of New 
York under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, and finally (1689) 
to treat it as belonging to the diocese of the 
Bishop of London ; and no minister was to be 
inducted into any parish of New York without 
the approval of said bishop. Parish-rates were 
also levied upon all inhabitants for the support 
of the Episcopal clergy. At first, these meas- 



W THE UNITED STATES. 41 

ures were accompanied with the concession of 
" liberty of conscience to all persons except 
Papists, so that they be content with a quiet 
enjoyment of the same." As the case then 
stood, the Church of England was the church 
recognized and sustained by the government. 
Other existing churches of " the Reformed 
religion " were allowed. Attendance upon the 
Episcopal Church was not made compulsory ; 
but public dissent was not encouraged. In 
1706, a petition " to exempt Protestants from 
any taxation for the support of ministers of 
churches to which they did not belong " was 
rejected by the government ; and, at a later 
period, the claim of an exclusive legal establish- 
ment was set up on behalf of the Episcopal 
Church in New York, and, indeed, for all the 
Colonies. In 1759, the then Bishop of London, 
in a letter to the king, said, " The Church of 
England being established in America, the 
Independents and other Dissenters who went 
to settle in New England could only have a 
toleration" (Colonial Documents, vii. 860). 

The claim of an original establishment was 
earnestly and successfully contested by Pres- 



42 CHURCH AND STATE 

byterians and other Dissenters in the Colony of 
New York; and the attempt to extend the 
Episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of London 
over the adjacent Colony of Connecticut, and 
the apprehension of the purpose of the crown 
to establish the Church of England throughout 
the Colonies, was one of the causes that precipi- 
tated the American Revolution. The evidence of 
this has escaped the research of Dr. Riittimann ; 
for he says, " Es beruht auf einem Missver- 
standnisse, wenn Laboulaye, in seiner Geschich- 
te der Vereinigten Staaten (Bd. ii. 8), sagt, 
4 On n'avait pas d'eveques, et on n'en voulait pas 
avoir.' " Here Laboulaye is quite right ; and 
the misapprehension lies with Dr. Riittimann, 
who mistakes the wishes of High-Church royal- 
ists for the sentiments of the people. The 
Assembly of the Province of Massachusetts, in 
its instructions to its agent in London in 1768, 
said, " The establishment of a Protestant Epis- 
copate in America is very zealously contended 
for" [i.e., by the arbitrary party in the British 
Parliament] ; " and it is very alarming to a people 
whose fathers, from the hardships they suffered 
under such an establishment, were obliged to 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 43 

fly their native country into a wilderness in 
order peaceably to enjoy their privileges, civil 
and religious. We hope in God that such an 
establishment will never take place in America, 
and we desire you would strenuously oppose it " 
(" Life of Samuel Adams," i. 157). And John 
Adams, the intellectual leader of the Revolu-' 
tion, testifies that the scheme of creating an 
Episcopate over the Colonies "contributed as 
much as any other cause to arouse the attention 
not only of the inquiring mind, but of the com- 
mon people, and urge them to close thinking on 
the constitutional authority of Parliament over 
the Colonies " (Works of John Adams, x. 185). 
How the common people felt upon the sub- 
ject may be inferred from a popular caricature 
published in Boston in 1769. It is entitled 
" An Attempt to land a Bishop in America." 
A ship has arrived at the dock with a lord- 
bishop in full canonicals, his state-carriage and 
appurtenances. He is met by a crowd, who 
carry a banner inscribed " Liberty and Free- 
dom of Conscience," and cry, " No lords, spir- 
itual or temporal, in New England." They are 
pelting him with " Sidney on Government," 



44 CHURCH AND STATE 

" Locke,'' " Calvin's Works," " Barclay's Apol- 
ogy ; " and the unfortunate bishop seeks refuge 
in the rigging, and orders the ship back to 
England, exclaiming as he goes, "Lord, now 
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." La- 
boulaye said truly, " On n'avait pas d'^veques, 
et on n'en voulait pas avoir." (See the original 
in " The Political Register," 1769, and a copy in 
Thornton's " Pulpit of the American Revolu- 
tion.") 

§ 5. Religious Freedom proclaimed. — That 
this anti-prelatical spirit of New England pre- 
vailed also in the Colony of New York is evi- 
dent from the fact, that in 1777, the year after 
the Declaration of Independence, the new State 
of New York in its constitution abrogated and 
repealed all statutes and acts of the Colony 
which " might be construed to establish or 
maintain any particular denomination of Chris- 
tians or their ministers ; " and also ordained that 
"the free exercise and enjoyment of religious 
profession and worship, without discrimination 
or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed 
within this State to all mankind." Thus New 
York, taught by her own experiences and neces- 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 45 

sities, preceded Virginia in arriving at the same 
goal. From this broad declaration of religious 
liberty that State has never in the least departed. 
In this colonial history it now remains only 
to consider the theocratic system so far as this 
was practised in New England. 



46 CHURCH AND STATE 



SECTION III. 

THEOCRATIC GOVERNMENT IN NEW ENGLAND. 

§ 1. It is well-nigh impossible for the Ger- 
man of the nineteenth century to comprehend 
the English Puritan of the sixteenth. One 
loves to associate with Luther a genial humor, 
a generous beer-mug, a broad and hearty hu- 
manity, a love of nature, a fondness for chil- 
dren and for social life, a cheerful temperament, 

— breaking forth in song, often rising to hilarity, 

— and a Christianity that was emancipated not 
only from the traditions of the Church, but also 
from the older traditions of the Eabbis, and 
from the law of Moses. In a word, with all his 
vehemence as a reformer, his boldness as a dis- 
putant, his heroism as a champion of the truth, 
his loftiness as a counsellor of princes and a 
leader of his age, Luther stands forth as the 
familiar man of the people, the personification 



m THE UNITED STATES. 47 

of the national Gemiithlichkeit. But the popu- 
lar idea of the Puritan — often met with in 
England and the United States, as well as in 
Germany — is of a stern dogmatist, who would 
compress human life, faith, and salvation, within 
an iron mould of Calvinism ; a fierce iconoclast, 
confoundiDg art with superstition, and waging 
war upon imagination as idolatry ; a rigid 
censor of manners as well as of morals, pre- 
scribing laws for eating and drinking, for dress 
and behavior, forbidding the drama, the conviv- 
ial game, the Christmas merriment ; a morose 
ascetic, denying pleasure as a sin ; a sour-faced, 
strait-laced, sanctimonious legalist, imposing the 
code of Moses upon the consciences of Chris- 
tians, framing severe sabbath laws, and, accord- 
ing to the caricature, 

" Hanging his cat of a Monday 
For killing a mouse of a Sunday." 

This popular notion of the Puritan is largely 
due to the court literature of the age of Charles 
II., when the restoration of the Stuarts 
brought in a flood of licentiousness to sweep 
away the Puritan simplicity of the Common- 



48 CHURCH AND STATE 

wealth. But when one considers what corrup- 
tions in Church and State, in doctrine and 
practice, called the Puritan into being, one can 
pardon to him a little of sternness in his theory, 
a little of asceticism in his life ; and, when one 
considers what persecutions the Puritan was 
called to endure, he will see that an iron reso- 
lution against the excesses of churchly power 
was a need of the times. But a movement that 
produced a Cromwell and a Milton had in it 
elements of moral grandeur ; and the strength 
and heroism of American freedom in Church and 
State are largely due to that stern faith and 
that rigid morality which the effeminacy of 
modern liberty affects to despise. " Civilized 
New England is the child of English Puritan- 
ism. The spirit of Puritanism was no creation 
of the sixteenth century. It is as old as the 
truth and manliness of England." — Palfrey's 
History of New England, vol. i. p. 101. 

§ 2. The Pilgrim Colony at Plymouth, — Dr. 
Riittimann, in his " Kirche und Staat in Nord- 
Amerika" (erster Abschnitt), attributes to all 
New England a form of theocratic government. 
This, however, was a peculiarity of the Colony 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 49 

of Massachusetts Bay, and of the Colony of 
New Haven until this was united with the 
Colony of Connecticut- In the Colonies of 
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth, no 
such theocracy existed. This last — the oldest 
settlement in New England — was in advance 
of all other American Colonies in the principle 
that the Church should be entirely independent 
of the dictation of the civil power, and also in 
maintaining the purity of the Church itself as a 
spiritual body. Upon both these points, the 
Plymouth colonists, known as the " Pilgrim 
Fathers," were far beyond the great body of 
English Puritans. 

Long before Luther's Reformation in Ger- 
many, there was in England an earnest move- 
ment for the reform of clerical abuses: the 
claim of the pope to present to benefices in 
England was resisted by Edward III. and his 
Parliament; and, when the pope threatened 
ecclesiastical censures, the Parliament rejoined 
(A.D. 1890), that any messenger bringing such 
excommunication into the realm " should incur 
pain of life and members." In short, as Froude 
expresses it, " a rehearsal of the English Refor- 

4 



50 CHURCH AND STATE. 

mation was witnessed at the close of the four- 
teenth century " (see 38 Ed. III., stat. 2 ; and 
Froude's " History of England," chap. vi.). The 
religious spirit of Wickliffe and of his fol- 
lowers, known as " Lollards," leavened the 
English nation. Nevertheless, the Church of 
England was finally divorced from its allegiance 
to Rome, not upon grounds of doctrinal belief 
or of ecclesiastical practice, but by the personal 
will of Henry VIII., who constituted the sover- 
eign the head of the Church as an institution of 
the State. The Church was not delivered from 
corruptions in doctrine and practice by this 
transfer of allegiance from the pope to the 
king ; but the spirit of reform inspired by 
Wickliffe was still working within the Church 
itself. " The secession from Rome was sancti- 
fied and secured by an honest, religious sense 
widely diffused among the people ; " and by 
degrees there arose a party known as " Puri- 
tans," who were, intent upon purging the 
Church of every remnant of Popish doctrine, 
and every symbol of Popish worship. The 
Puritans, however, as a body, had no thought 
of separating the Church from the State. They 



W THE UNITED STATES. 51 

were reformers within the Establishment. Re- 
garding the Church as a national institution, 
they looked to Parliament for the reformation 
of faith and manners ; and when at length, in 
the contest of Parliament with Charles I., they 
came into power as a political party, they used 
the authority of law, with severe penalties, to 
enforce their own standard of morals and piety. 
They substituted " a domineering Presbyterian- 
ism for a domineering Episcopacy." 

§ 3. Nonconformists and Separatists. — But 
meantime some of the old Puritan Reformers 
had advanced into broader and clearer light. 
When, in 1559, the arbitrary will of Queen 
Elizabeth insisted upon absolute uniformity of 
worship according to the rubric of the Estab- 
lished Church, some of the Puritan clergy 
openly refused to observe certain portions of 
the Liturgy, which they regarded as relics of 
Romanism (1563). For this they were styled 
Nonconformists. Many were silenced, or deprived 
of their livings ; and some were imprisoned, or 
were banished under penalty of death. Most 
of these prescribed Nonconformists awaited in 
patience the coming of better days : a few, 



52 CHUECH AND STATE 

however, despairing of any true reform, or any- 
real liberty within a church ordered and con- 
trolled by the State, withdrew entirely from the 
public churches, and met for worship in private 
houses (1567). These were now called Sepa- 
ratists, and were held guilty of schism. 

§4.-4 Primitive Church, — By the study of 
the New Testament, these Separatists came to 
the discovery that the primitive Church was 
simply a company or society of believers in 
Christ ; that it had no connection with the 
State, and no bishop or hierarchy, but was a 
brotherhood in which all were equals; that it 
consisted of those who were spiritually renewed 
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
who evinced that faith by godly lives ; that 
every such society of believers had power to 
choose its own pastor or teacher and deacons, — 
the only officers known to the New Testament ; 
and that such several independent, self-govern- 
ing churches were united together, not by civil 
or national bonds, not by territorial limits nor 
external jurisdiction, but by voluntary com- 
munion in the same faith and the same works 
of love. Not a few of these Separatists were 



IN TEE UNITED STATES. 53 

seized, imprisoned, whipped, tortured, and even 
put to death. 

A company of these Christian believers met 
together in 1606, at Scrooby, near Bawtry, in 
Nottinghamshire, England, and there, in their 
own words, " joined themselves by a covenant 
of the Lord into a church estate, in the fellow- 
ship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways 
made known, or to be made known, to them, 
according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it 
should cost them, the Lord assisting them." 
Here are the principles of personal faith, of 
voluntary association, of progress in knowledge 
and truth, and of heroic self-sacrifice. All that 
these Christians asked of the State and its 
Church was the privilege of believing and wor- 
shipping in their own way. This was denied 
them. To escape persecution, they chose exile, 
and in 1607 took refuge in Holland (first at 
Amsterdam), then the sanctuary of religious 
freedom. In 1608 these emigrants settled in 
Leyden, where their pastor — Rev. John Robin- 
son, a man of great wisdom, learning, and piety 
— lies buried at this day. But they continued to 
be Englishmen in feeling and in language : and, 



54 CHURCH AND STATE 

when times so far improved in England that 
they could obtain a patent of colonization, they 
resolved to emigrate to America ; and, sailing in 
" The Mayflower," they landed at Plymouth 
Dec. 21, 1620, — a day now celebrated as 
"Forefathers' Day." 

Before landing, this little band of exiles for 
liberty of conscience assembled in the cabin of 
" The Maj^flower," and draughted a form of civil 
government, which was the germ of the re- 
publican institutions of the United States. 

Their charter authorized them to settle in 
the upper part of Virginia ; but they were 
about to land far to the north of this, — in an 
unknown wilderness, beyond the jurisdiction of 
any government. So they made a government 
of their own. Standing around the table in the 
ship's cabin, they organized themselves into a 
commonwealth, and pledged themselves to 
make just and equal laws for the general good, 
and promised to obey the laws of the majority 
and the officers whom they should elect. There 
were forty-one men in all, representing very 
different conditions of life. Every one of these 
signed this compact ; and they then elected one 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 55 

of their number to be their governor. This is 
believed to be the first example of a written 
constitution based upon th§ equal rights of men 
as members of the State. These men recognized 
one another as equals before the law ; and, as 
the foundation of government, they laid down 
the broad principle, that laws should be 
framed for " the general good," and should be 
" just and equal " toward all alike. 

§ 5. Church-Laws at Plymouth. * — As the 
Plymouth colonists were all of one faith, and 
were, in fact, members of one church, they 
naturally made provision for the support of 
religion from the public treasury ; and, as the 
Colony extended, they ordered that churches 
should be built and maintained in every town 
at the public cost. At a later period, when the 
peace and safety of so small a commonwealth 
were threatened by innovations, they passed 
laws compelling attendance upon public wor- 
ship, and forbidding churches diverse from 
those already set up and approved, unless the 
consent and approbation of the government 
should first be obtained. Theirs was not 
strictly an established church ; but the pretext 



56 CHURCH AND STATE 

for such restrictions upon the very liberty 
which they came to establish was the preserva- 
tion of a homogeneous colony and of a pure 
and independent church. They required, also, 
that a "freeman," or voter in the town-meet- 
ings, should be of good personal character, and 
" orthodox in the fundamentals of religion." 
Such regulations show that these colonists were 
not wholly emancipated from the notions and 
customs of their times, nor quite equal to the 
occasion of proclaiming religious liberty to all 
men. Nevertheless, the Plymouth colonists 
made a great step forward, and were never 
betrayed into gross intolerance. Though even 
this most notable colony — the mother of civil 
and religious liberty — was still hampered by 
the notion that the State should provide for the 
maintenance of religion, and should punish 
blasphemy, profaneness, sabbath-breaking, and 
heresy, as crimes, yet it did not, like later Puri- 
tan Colonies of New England, go to the oppo- 
site extreme of restricting civil offices and 
privileges to members of the church. 

The original Pilgrims were more just and lib- 
eral than their immediate successors. In the 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 57 

second generation, the prosperity of the Colony 
tempted mere commercial adventurers to join it ; 
and these brought with them elements of dis- 
cord, disorder, vice, and irreligion, that seemed 
to call for severe measures of proscription. 
Yet harsh laws passed in an emergency of pub- 
lic danger were repealed as soon as the excite- 
ment had subsided ; and Plymouth was, in the 
main, a model of a well-regulated Colonjr. 
Some errors and excesses must be pardoned to 
the spirit of the age ; these have long since 
passed away : but the essential work of the 
Pilgrim Fathers in the pure conception of 
the Church as a spiritual body separate from the 
State, and the pure conception of the State as a 
free Commonwealth, is fruitful in blessings to 
this day. 

§6.-4. Theocracy in Massachusetts. — A few 
years after the settlement of Plymouth, the 
Company of Massachusetts Bay was chartered, 
and began the settlement of Salem, Boston, 
and their vicinity. Though this company was 
commercial in its objects, the first settlers under 
its charter were mostly Puritans ; and their 
church-organization followed substantially that 



58 CHURCH AND STATE 

of the Plymouth colonists. Bat these Puritans 
of Massachusetts were much more inclined 
than their Pilgrim neighbors to use the civil 
power in matters of religion. 

The English hierarchy had been their op- 
pressor ; and, should the Church of England be 
allowed a footing in the Colony, it would soon 
overturn those civil and religious liberties 
which the colonists had come so far to enjoy. 
In order to secure good and true men for the 
offices of government, and at the same time to 
insure the preservation of the church order 
first established by the colonists, it was decreed, 
" that, for the time to come, no man shall be 
admitted to the freedom of this body politic 
but such as are members of some of the 
churches within the limits of the same " (1631, 
Mass. Colonial Record, i. 87). 

In the Colony of New Haven (1639) the rule 
was likewise adopted, " that church-members 
only should be free burgesses," and that the 
Scriptures should be the rule of government in 
the Commonwealth as well as in the Church. 
The first intent of these rules was, not to set up 
a divine right in the Church to rule the Com- 



I2T TEE UNITED STATES. 59 

monwealth, but to provide a government of 
ideal perfection. It was the old dream of 
Plato, — to create a perfect republic, which, at 
last, he confessed could not come into being 
" until kings are philosophers, or philosophers 
are kings." In the end, however, this theocratic 
system tended to produce bigotry in the State, 
and hypocrisy in the Church ; and, with the prog- 
ress of experience, it was discarded. As early 
as 1648, the churches of New England, through a 
synod, declared that " it is not in the power of 
magistrates to compel their subjects to become 
church - members ; and as it is unlawful for 
church-officers to meddle with the sword of the 
magistrate, so it is unlawful for the magistrate 
to meddle with the work proper to church-offi- 
cers." 

In this theocratic government Dr. Riitti- 
mann imputes far too much power to the 
clergy. He says, " Ueber die Aufnahme in die 
Kirche, also auch liber das Aktivbiirgerrecht, 
entschieden in lekter Instanz die Geistlichen, 
die nur denjenigen den Eintritt gestatteten, 
welche sich iiber ihre geistige Wiedergebubt 
durch Einsendung eines schriflichen, zur Vorle- 



60 CHURCH AND STATE 

sung in der Kirche bestimmten Glaubens 
bekenntnisses ausgewiesen hatten." But it was 
the Church itself, the whole brotherhood of 
believers, which determined by vote whether 
the candidate should be admitted to its fellow- 
ship upon this evidence of his personal faith 
and character. The government in Church and 
State was a spiritual democracy. The influence 
of the pastor, in such a case, was only moral and 
advisory; and the pastor himself was elected 
to his office by the church over which he pre- 
sided. New England was never governed by 
her clergy. 

In judging of the Puritans of New England, 
and of the theocracy which they established in 
the Colonies of Massachusetts Bay and of New 
Haven, one must be careful not to ascribe to 
the spirit of the men, nor to the influence of 
their faith, laws and measures which were due 
to the spirit of the age and to the political 
necessities of the hour. It is common to ring 
the changes upon "Puritan persecution" and 
" Massachusetts intolerance ; " and even so cau- 
tious and candid a writer as Dr. Uhden as- 
cribes to a peculiarity of the congregational 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 61 

theocracy ." those peremptory measures for the 
expulsion of every opposite tendency which 
threatened to disturb the unity of the Church 
and the State governments, or but to cripple the 
efficiency of the latter" (Uhden, "New-England 
Theocracy," chap. ii.). But measures which 
Dr. Uhden ascribes to a stringent church 
theory, and which he elsewhere characterizes 
as religious persecution, were prompted by a 
political necessity ; and, singularly enough, this 
action of New-England Puritanism in the sev- 
enteenth century is reflected in the German 
Liberalism of the nineteenth. It is seldom 
wise for one nation to criticise the internal his- 
tory of another ; and " those who live in glass 
houses should not throw stones." Yet the 
experiences of one people may serve to inter- 
pret the doings of another. What the Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay did to protect itself from 
emissaries of the Church of England, and to 
rid itself of Papists, Anabaptists, and Quakers, 
was grounded in precisely the same plea of the 
necessities of government, and the maintenance 
of public peace, order, and unity, which to-day 
is urged by the liberal press for the expulsion 



62 CHURCH AND STATE 

of the Jesuits from Germany. And if this 
plea is valid for an empire of thirty-seven mil- 
lions, with an army of. twelve hundred thou- 
sand, surely something may be conceded to the 
fears of a handful of colonists who knew too 
well the dangers that threatened them from 
pope and prelate without, and from faction and 
fanaticism within. They, too, banished suspi- 
cious characters and dangerous agitators. Said 
one of the Massachusetts fathers, " For the 
security of the flock, we pen up the wolf ; but a 
door is purposely left open where he may 
depart at his pleasure." 

But there was progress in liberty. By the 
charter of Rhode Island, 1663, it was decreed 
that " no person within the said Colony should 
be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, 
or called in question, for any difference of opin- 
ion in matters of religion which did not actually 
disturb the civil peace of said Colony ; but that 
all and every person and persons might from 
time to time, and at all times thereafter, freely 
and fully have and enjoy his and their own 
judgments and consciences in matters of reli- 
gious concernments." 



IN 1 THE UNITED STATES. 63 

Such, in general, were the relations of the 
Colonies to religion, with the addition of the 
humane and impartial policy of the Quakers in 
Pennsylvania, and the liberal tendency of the 
Catholics in Maryland. But the fires of the 
Revolution, which welded the Colonies together, 
consumed the dross of establishment, of patron- 
age, and of theocracy, and left the pure gold 
of religious liberty to be wrought into the 
National Constitution. 



64 CHURCH AND STATE 



SECTION IV. 

§ 1. Relation of the Churches to the Laivs. — 
Since the Revolution which terminated the 
dependence of the American Colonies upon 
Great Britain, the theory of the civil govern- 
ment in the United States has been, that churches 
should be known to the laws, not as religious 
bodies constituted to maintain a creed and a 
worship, but simply as corporations empowered 
to hold property for religious uses. All rights 
of property which had been acquired by 
churches under the colonial governments were 
confirmed by the States which succeeded to 
their jurisdiction. The separation of the Church 
from the State, while it deprived the Church, 
for the future, of the benefit of State grants or 
taxes, did not work the confiscation of any pos- 
sessions already held by the Church. For exam- 
ple, the first constitution of the State of New 
York, adopted in 1777, declared that " nothing 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 65 

in the constitution contained should be con- 
strued to affect any grants of lands within the 
State made by the authority of the king or his 
predecessors, or to annul any charters to bodies 
politic, by him or them, or any of them, made 
prior to the 14th of October, 1775." This 
covered church-property as well as educational 
or charitable foundations and private posses- 
sions. 

In the founding of the Colony of Virginia, as 
has already been stated, the religious Establish- 
ment of England was adopted ; and, before the 
Revolution, the Episcopal Church had become 
vested, by grants of the crown or colony, with 
large properties, which continued in its posses- 
sion after the constitution of the State had for- 
bidden the creation or continuance of any 
religious establishment possessed of exclusive 
rights or privileges, or the compelling the citi- 
zens to worship under a stipulated form or dis- 
cipline, or to pay taxes to those whose creed 
they could not conscientiously believe. By 
statute, in 1801, the legislature asserted their 
right to all the property of the Episcopal Church 
in the respective parishes of the State ; and 



66 CHURCH AND STATE 

directed and authorized the overseers of the 
poor and their successors in each parish, 
wherein any glebe land was vacant or should 
become so, to sell the same, and appropriate the 
proceeds to the use of the poor of the parish. 
By this act the State sought, in effect, to resume 
grants made by the sovereignty. The Supreme 
Court of the United States held the grant not 
revocable, and that the legislative act was, 
therefore, unconstitutional and void (Cooley 
on " Constitutional Limitations," chap. ix. 
p. 275). 

§ 2. How Church Property is held. — But, in 
order to hold property, each church must 
either itself be constituted, or must cause to be 
constituted as its representative, a corporation 
known to the civil law. The mode of consti- 
tuting such corporations differs in different 
States ; and also, in the same State, there may 
be different ways of creating a church cor- 
poration adapted to different forms of eccle- 
siastical organization : but the principle is 
universal, that the State does not know the 
Church in matters of religious doctrines or 
usages, but only in matters of temporal con- 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 67 

cern. It has been ruled by the highest courts 
in the United States, that " the civil tribunals 
possess no authority whatever to determine on 
ecclesiastical matters, on questions of heresy, or 
what is orthodox in matters of belief ; and so 
the ecclesiastical authority may not entertain 
any civil questions, or in any manner affect 
a disposition of property by the decisions of 
their judicatories. The court cannot interfere 
with the determination of the majority in any 
manner, except to correct a misappropriation of 
trust-property or funds " (Wilson vs. the Pres- 
byterian Church of John's Island, S.C.). 

In case of a dispute for the possession of 
church-property, the civil court might inquire 
into the religious beliefs and practices of the 
contestants, simply as a question of fact, to as- 
sist in determining the claim, precisely as it 
would do in the case of any club or voluntary 
association having a declaration of principles, or 
articles of agreement, upon the clue observance 
of which the possession of a certain property 
was dependent ; but only upon such collateral 
questions of civil rights does American law 
take cognizance of churches. 



68 cnuncH and state 

§ 3. Test Cases wider this Principle. — Several 
important cases arising in different States, and 
under different forms of church, polity, have 
settled this as the uniform principle. In the 
year 1810, in the city of Boston, and, to a wide 
extent, in the State of Massachusetts, churches 
that had been constituted upon a Calvinistic 
creed went over to Unitarianism. Of the 861 
Congregational churches then existing in that 
State, 96 thus changed the basis of their faith. 
In some instances, a majority of the Church 
proper (that is, of those enrolled as commu- 
nicants or members of the spiritual body) voted 
to adopt this change of faith. In others, the 
Church, as a body, adhered to its original con- 
fession ; but a majority of the parish or society, 
which was the legal corporation associated 
with the Church, declared the change of 
basis, and voted to sustain a Unitarian minister. 
Hence arose many disputes as to the possession 
of church-property, and test cases were brought 
before the civil courts for adjudication. Previ- 
ously it had been loosely held in Massachusetts, 
that churches themselves were bodies corpo- 
rate, competent to hold property for the pur- 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 69 

poses for which, they are formed. But the 
Chief Justice now decided that " the only cir- 
cumstance which gives a church any legal 
character is its connection with some regularly- 
constituted society." This decision largely 
favored the Unitarians ; and, as a consequence, 
not a few Orthodox churches (i.e., bodies 
spiritual) were dispossessed of their houses of 
worship by congregations (i.e., bodies corporate) 
which had become Unitarian. Still the court, 
though supposed to be biassed toward Unitari- 
anism, decided the question, not upon disputed 
points of faith, but upon technical points of 
law. 

In the year 1837, the General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church, representing that com- 
munion throughout the United States, by a 
summary vote of excision cut off whole pres- 
byteries and synods for alleged errors in faith 
and 'discipline. The exscinded party at once 
organized a New General Assembly, with the 
same name as the Old ; and each body claimed 
to be the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States. The Assembly, as it existed before the 
division, held certain trust funds for educational 



70 CHURCH AND STATE 

and benevolent purposes ; and the " Old School," 
as they were called, remained in possession. 
These funds being held by charter from the 
State of Pennsylvania, the New-School Assem- 
bly brought a suit for the administration of the 
same, or at least an equitable share in their 
benefits ; but the Supreme Court decided that 
the title remained with the exscinding body. 
Of course, the articles of faith and discipline 
were considered in evidence, but only in the 
point of view of legal construction. In 1870, 
the two schools were re-united in one church. 

Similar decisions in the State of New Jersey 
are to the effect that " the courts cannot inquire 
into the doctrines or opinions of any religious 
society for the purpose of deciding whether 
these are right or wrong ; but it is their duty to 
do this when civil rights depend thereon, and 
then it must be done by such evidence as the 
nature of the case admits of." 

In the State of Illinois, the controversy be- 
tween Rev. Charles E. Cheney, rector of Christ 
Church in Chicago, and Bishop Whitehouse, 
the diocesan of the Episcopal Church in that 
State, has led to several important decisions, 



m THE UNITED STATES. 71 

defining the position of the civil courts upon 
ecclesiastical questions. From conscientious 
scruples, Mr. Cheney was accustomed to omit 
— as many Episcopal clergymen do — - a phrase 
in the baptismal service, as implying a false 
doctrine of regeneration. For this liberty his 
bishop called him to account before an ecclesi- 
astical court, and, in accordance with its ver- 
dict, forbade him to exercise the functions of a 
minister in the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
But the parish of Christ Church, through its 
wardens, determined to stand by its rector ; and 
he has continued to officiate in that character. 
To protect himself against the bishop, Mr. Che- 
ney applied to the civil court for an injunction to 
stay ecclesiastical proceedings, which threatened, 
without cause, to deprive him of his livelihood, 
and thus to interfere with his civil rights. The 
court, however, decided, that, at this stage, the 
case did not fall within its cognizance. But, on 
the other hand, it is not possible for the bishop 
to eject Mr. Cheney by any civil process, nor 
to use a court of law to enforce in any way 
the pains of his own ecclesiastical court. 
Christ Church and Mr. Cheney could be 



72 CHURCH AND STATE 

brought under the judicial power of the State 
only through an action brought by some mem- 
ber or members of the parish itself, upon the 
ground that the parish-property has been per- 
verted from the true uses of an Episcopal 
church. That would be a question of fact for 
the courts to decide, as in any case of contract 
or usage, written or implied. Meantime Mr. 
Cheney's strength lies, not in the protection of 
any court, but in the determination of his par- 
ish to stand by him in his quarrel with his 
bishop. So long as the rights of person and 
property are not distinctly at issue, the State 
leaves the Church to settle such a quarrel in its 
own way. 

Absolute uniformity in the ruling of the civil 
courts upon ecclesiastical questions in the dif- 
ferent States is not to be looked for ; but the 
principle universally obtains, that churches are 
known in law simply as corporations, and that 
no civil court can take cognizance of the doc- 
trines, rules, usages, or actions, of a religious 
society, except so far as these relate to collat- 
eral questions affecting the disposal of property, 
or the civil rights of members of the body. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 73 

§ 4. How Church Corporations are constituted* 
— The more usual method of constituting a 
church corporation is through the medium of 
trustees representing the local congregation. 
For instance, in the State of New York, soon 
after the Revolution, an act was passed "_td 
enable all the religious denominations in the 
State to appoint trustees, who should be a body 
corporate for the purpose of taking care of the 
temporalities of their respective congregations, 
and for other purposes therein mentioned " 
(Act of April 6, 1784). This act has been 
modified to suit the constitutions of different 
churches. Thus, for the Episcopal Church, 
the vestry of each particular congregation is, 
" to all intents and purposes, a body corporate ; " 
but the law prescribes the manner in which the 
vestry shall be chosen. In the Reformed 
Church, " the minister or ministers, and elders 
or deacons, of every church or congregation " 
(that is, the consistory), are made trustees, and a 
body corporate. In the Methodist Church, " the 
presiding elder and a majority of the district 
stewards, appointed according to the discipline 
of said church, for any given district," shall be 



74 CHURCH AND STATE 

the body corporate for the church within that 
district (Act of April 5, 1867). So long as 
New York remained a Colony, the Roman- 
Catholic Church was hardly able to gain a foot- 
ing upon its soil. In July, 1700, it was enacted 
that u every Jesuit and seminary priest, or 
ecclesiastical person, made or ordained by any 
authority derived, or pretended to be derived, 
from the Pope or See of Rome, then residing 
within the Province, should depart therefrom on 
or before the 1st of November ensuing. Any 
such person preaching, or teaching others to say 
Popish prayers, masses, granting of absolution, 
or celebrating or using any other of the Romish 
ceremonies and rites of worship, shall be deemed 
an incendiary and disturber of the public peace, 
and an enemy to the true Christian religion/' 
Now, hoy^ever, the Roman-Catholic is one of 
the largest communions in the State, being 
made up chiefly of Irish and German immi- 
grants, and very largely of female servants. 
For each congregation of the Roman-Catholic 
Church, the archbishop or bishop of the diocese, 
the vicar-general, the pastor of the particular 
church, and two laymen, members of the same, 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 75 

selected by the first three, are made trustees of 
the congregation. This provision betrays too 
great a concession on the part of politicians to 
the Roman-Catholic clergy. Nevertheless these 
Catholic trustees, just like the trustees of an 
insurance-company or a bank, " are required to 
exhibit upon oath to the Supreme Court in the 
judicial district in which each church is situ- 
ated, and in every three years, an inventory of 
all the estate, real and personal, belonging to 
such church, and of the annual income thereof." 
By the laws of the State of New York, every 
church is restricted, as to the amount of real 
and personal estate which it may hold, to a cer- 
tain specified yearly income from the same ; 
the design of this provision being to prevent 
the growth of rich and powerful ecclesiastical 
corporations. The three fundamental features 
of these laws are, — 

1. Each particular church must be known to 
the law as a body corporate. 

2. This body corporate must represent the 
lay element. 

3. It must be restricted as to its annual 
revenue and income from real and personal 
estate. 



76 CHURCH AND STATE 

Hence, by these principles, it is not legally 
possible for the Roman-Catholic Archbishop of 
New York, nor for the bishops collectively, to 
hold and control as a unit all the property of 
the Catholic Church within the State. Each 
individual congregation of that church — - the 
congregatiou meeting in this or that village, or 
in this or that locality of a city, or under this 
or that specific name — must become a distinct 
corporation ; and a certificate of that fact must 
be proved in the same manner as deeds of real 
estate, and filed in the office of the countv 
clerk, and a copy in the office of the Secretary 
of State. The certificate runs as follows : " We 
the undersigned — to wit, A. B., the Roman- 
Catholic archbishop (or bishop) of the diocese of 

, C. D., vicar-general of such diocese, and 

E. F., pastor of the church of in such 

diocese, and laymen, members of the said 

church, duly selected and appointed — hereby 

certify that the name or title of is that by 

which they and their successors shall be known 
and distinguished as a body corporate, by virtue 
of the act of the legislature," &c. If the courts 
are true to their functions, the Roman-Catholic 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 77 

Church in the United States can be held as 
closely as any corporation within the due re- 
straints of law. 

It is alleged that the Archbishop of New 
York evades the law concerning church-prop- 
erty by purchasing with church-funds property 
in his own name, and, at the same time, exe- 
cuting a quit-claim in blank form in favor of 
his successor. This quit-claim is held by the 
vicar-general : and, on the death of one arch- 
bishop, the name of the next archbishop is 
inserted in the deed ; and he, in like manner, 
executes a new quit-claim to insure the official 
succession to the property. Such an evasion of 
the law could not stand if it were fairly 
brought before the courts. In 1862, a citizen 
of New York bequeathed all his property " to 
the Right Rev. Bishop Hughes, in trust for the 
use and benefit of the Roman-Catholic Church 
of the State of New York." The bequest was 
declared void, on the ground that it was an at- 
tempt to create an express trust more extensive 
than was permitted by the statutes. 

Yet experience has shown that it is well-nigh 
impossible to frame a law or to make a judicial 



78 CHURCH AND STATE 

decision which the Roman-Catholic Church will 
not evade, or pervert to. its own advantage; 
and in a city like New York, with a large pro- 
portion of Irish-Catholic voters, there are 
always politicians who will court the priests 
for the sake of their influence upon this pliant 
body of electors. The Irish are clannish, and 
follow enthusiastically their leaders ; they are 
credulous, and easily deceived by demagogues ; 
they are superstitious, and blindly obey their 
priests : hence, where there is a large Roman- 
Catholic constituency, it is easy for priests and 
politicians to enter into collusion for the ag- 
grandizement of the Roman-Catholic Church in 
violation of the spirit of the laws. For in- 
stance, the act for the incorporation of Roman- 
Catholic churches in New- York State provides 
that the whole " real and personal estate of any 
such church, exclusive of the church-edifice, 
parsonage, and schoolhouses, together with the 
land on which the same may be erected, shall 
not exceed the annual income of. three thou- 
sand dollars." But, under the pretext of 
repairs, improvements, &c, many churches con- 
trive to exceed this amount ; and besides, with 



IN TEE UNITED STATES. 79 

the connivance of politicians, the Catholic 
churches obtain a release from assessments* and 
also positive grants of large sums from the 
State treasury, under the subterfuge of hospi- 
tals, asylums, and various charities. Public at- 
tention has been roused to these abuses, and 
they are likely to be corrected. But the Ro- 
man-Catholic Church never loses sight of its 
own aggrandizement. In all times, under all 
governments, through all professions and ap- 
pearances, it is working ever toward one and 
the same end ; and hence, while securing to 
this subtle ecclesiastical organism the largest 
religious freedom and the amplest protection of 
the laws, American citizens keep up the watch- 
word, " The price of liberty is eternal vigi- 
lance." 

In the States of Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut, the custom of raising money for the sup- 
port of the Church by a tax levied upon the 
town or parish prevailed for some time after the 
Revolution; but this has long since given place 
to a system which has these substantial features : 
The Church is regarded as a spiritual body, 
made up of renewed souls (who have united 



80 CHURCH AND STATE 

with it upon their own choice and confession) ; 
and, as a body spiritual, it has no concern with 
temporalities. But associated with each church 
is a body of regular worshippers, who contribute 
voluntarily toward its support. Under certain 
regulations, these stated worshippers and con- 
tributors are erected into a body corporate, 
known as the parish, the congregation, or the 
ecclesiastical society ; and this body is known in 
law, and holds the property of the church. In 
many instances, however, the church itself, the 
body spiritual, chooses also to become a body 
corporate, and to act in both capacities. In 
some of the new States of the West this is the 
general custom. 

§ 5. No State Tax for Parish Dues. — The old 
idea of the parish as a territorial commune to 
be taxed for the church has passed away ; and 
the ecclesiastical organization of a parish of the 
Episcopal Church, for instance, gives to the 
parish no civil or corporate powers. To obtain 
such powers, the local church, or the parish or 
society as its appointed representative, must 
become a body corporate, each particular con- 
gregation under the law of the State in which 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 81 

it is constituted. There can be no incorpora- 
tion of any one church for the whole country. 
Each particular congregation must provide 
voluntarily for its own support by ways and 
methods of its own. The simple form in com- 
mon use in Massachusetts will serve to illus- 
trate the working of this principle. It runs as 

follows : " The undersigned, all of , in the 

county of , in the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, do hereby associate ourselves together, 

under the name of , as a parish or religious 

society, at said ; and the purposes for 

which this corporation is established are the 
support of the public worship of God, and the 
promotion of Christian knowledge and charity 

according to the general usages of the 

churches and parishes of Massachusetts." The 
parish or society thus constituted elects its own 
officers, frames its own laws (subject to general 
statutes of the State), and enters into a compact 
with the Church proper — the spiritual body 
with which it is associated — concerning the 
support of a pastor and other necessary pro- 
visions for church-worship ; and this compact is 
valid and binding in law. Whatever the form 



82 CHURCH AND STATE 

of adjustment, the law takes cognizance of a 
church only through its own act of incorpora- 
tion as affecting the rights of property or of 
person : but should a church use its property in 
treasonable designs against the government, or 
for immoral or dangerous purposes, it would 
forfeit its corporate rights ; and no fiction of 
religious independence or liberty of conscience 
could cover such perversion and abuse. No 
church thus holding its right of corporate ex- 
istence under American laws could be permitted 
to act contrary to those laws upon the plea of 
a paramount allegiance to a foreign sovereign. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 83 



SECTION V. 

HOW CHURCHES ARE CONSTITUTED AND SUP- 
PORTED.- 

§ 1. Under the laws of the United States, 
and of the several States of the Union, each 
church is at liberty to organize itself according 
to its own model, to frame its own laws, to 
raise its revenue in its own way, and to admin- 
ister its own discipline. The broad principle is, 
that a church is a voluntary association ; and its 
constitution, laws, and canons are stipulations 
between the parties, defining their duties and 
obligations. The civil rights of the members 
are still protected by the civil tribunals ; but 
civil courts will not interfere to prevent an 
investigation before an ecclesiastical tribunal of 
a voluntary religious association when proceed- 
ing according to its constitution, canons, or 
rules, and when the subject-matter or person 



84 CHURCH AND STATE 

is within its jurisdiction (Superior Court 
of Chicago, 1863, — case of Hagar vs. White- 
house). 

The latest decision in the Cheney case at 
Chicago, referred to in the preceding section, 
defines these principles in the following 
terms : — 

" "Where it appears that a local church and 
the rector thereof are members of, and under 
the supervision and control of, a general and 
superior church organization, to whose faith 
and discipline they have voluntarily attached 
themselves, those who continue to adhere to the 
faith and discipline of the general church are 
the beneficiaries for whose use the trustees hold 
the church-property, although they are the 
minority of the local church organization. 

" Where the proper ecclesiastical tribunals 
have obtained jurisdiction, and have tried and 
passed sentence of deposition upon an alleged 
offender, civil courts not only recognize the 
validity of, but give effect to, the decisions of 
the church courts. 

" In all matters of religious faith and practice, 
the ecclesiastical courts, provided they have 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 85 

obtained jurisdiction, are as entirely independent 
of the civil tribunals as the latter are of the 
former upon all questions relating to property- 
interests. 

" Neither will the courts, in absence of acts 
of incorporation which change the common law, 
permit a majority of the members of a church 
which is itself connected with and subject to 
the jurisdiction and government of a superior 
church judicatory to secede from the denomina- 
tion to which they have voluntarily attached 
themselves, and take with them the church- 
property. Such an act is regarded in law as a 
perversion of the trust ; and a court of equity 
will reach forth its strong arm, and prevent it. 
The holders of the legal title are regarded in a 
court of equity as holding it in trust for the 
maintenance of the faith and worship of the 
founders of the organization ; and any diversion 
of it into another use is so far a breach of trust 
as to demand the interposition of the court. 
This position is sustained by many cases, Eng- 
lish and American. 

" The bill presents the case of a rector of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, subject to its laws 



86 CHURCH AND STATE 

and discipline, who has been regularly tried and 
deposed by the proper church authority, but 
who still continues to preach, and to be paid 
therefor from the income of the church-prop- 
erty, and have the free use of the parsonage. 
As a chancellor, I can now have nothing to do 
with the regularity or irregularity, justice or 
injustice, of that trial and deposition. I must, 
for the purposes of this suit, accept' it as a legal 
procedure and judgment ; and, thus accepting it, 
I must apply the law to the admitted facts of 
the bill. 

" The rule of law is, that a rightful sentence 
of deposition precludes the deposed minister 
from the right to occupy the pulpit, or adminis- 
ter divine ordinances, in the church to which 
he is. attached." 

In other cases it has been decided that the 
majority of a church had a right to change its 
creed, and yet to retain the property ; but, in 
this case, the Christ Church in Chicago still 
claims to be an integral part of the Episcopal 
Church. 

If, however, a church should assume to 
exercise civil powers and to administer civil 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 87 

penalties, its action would at once be nullified 
by the civil courts ; and the claim of a church, or 
of any religious body or order, to represent and 
• enforce the sovereignty of a foreign head in 
contravention of the laws of a State or of the 
Union, would not be tolerated for a moment. 
Under the supreme sovereignty of the National 
Constitution, each particular State of the Union 
has a certain reserved and qualified sovereignty 
within its own borders ; but the notion of a 
foreign sovereignty — as, for instance, at Rome 
or at Mecca — over citizens of the United 
States could not be allowed as a plea of reli- 
gious obligation. 

§ 2. Churches Territorial, National, or Local. 
— In the United States, some ecclesiastical 
organizations are, in their form, territorial or 
national ; and others are purely local and par- 
ticular. Examples of the former are the 
Episcopal, the Methodist, and the Presbyterian ; 
of the latter, the Baptist and the Congrega- 
tional. By the theory of the Episcopal Church, 
each State constitutes a diocese, or is sub- 
divided into two or three dioceses, according to 
its area and to the number of Episcopal com- 



88 CHURCH AND STATE 

municants and congregations within its bounds. 
Each diocese has its bishop ; and the bishop 
•with the clergy of the diocese and a lay deputa- 
tion form a convention, which meets annually for 
the regulation of the affairs of the diocese. 
Once in three years, a general convention, com- 
posed of all the bishops and of clerical and lay 
delegates from each diocesan convention, meets 
for the supreme direction of the Episcopal 
Church in the whole country. This general 
convention consists of a house of bishops, and 
a house of clerical and lay deputies. But 
each particular congregation of the Episco- 
pal Church chooses its own rector, subject to 
the approval of the bishop, and is incorporated 
through its vestry, or other lay committee, for 
the management of its own temporal affairs. 
For the purpose of holding property, the Church 
must conform in this respect to the local laws. 

The Methodist Church divides the country 
into districts or conferences. Each local con- 
ference, composed chiefly of the clergy and other 
officials, appoints the ministers to the congrega- 
tions within its bounds, changing them once 
in every two or three years. There is no per- 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 89 

manent pastorate, and the people have no voice 
in the selection of their ministers. A general 
conference, made up from all the local confer- 
ences, has absolute control over the Methodist 
Church in the whole country. But here, as 
before, the local laws must determine the 
mode of organization for holding property. 

In the Presbyterian Church, each congrega- 
tion is governed by a session, composed of the 
pastor and of lay elders chosen by the body of 
communicants in that particular congregation. 
The churches of a given district are combined 
in a presbytery, composed of their pastors and 
of an elder from each session. The presbytery 
has power of revision over the sessions within 
its bounds. Above the presbytery, and having 
a power of supervision over it, is the synod, 
comprehending a larger district, and made up of 
pastors and elders from all the congregations 
within its bounds. And above all these is the 
general assembly, made up of deputies from all 
the presbyteries, and having a final control over 
the whole Presbyterian Church in the United 
States. Thus all these churches, Episcopal, 
Methodist, Presbyterian, though having no 



90 CHURCH AND STATE 

connection with, the State, and no support from 
the State, are in their structure territorial, and 
in their ideal national. 

On the other hand, the Baptist and the Con- 
gregational churches are local and particular. 
Their theory is, that each, assembly of Christian 
believers, united in a church covenant, and 
worshipping statedly together, is a church com- 
plete in itself, with power to appoint its own 
officers, and regulate its own affairs ; that the 
government is vested solely in the congregation 
of believers ; and that there can be no external 
jurisdiction over a particular church. These 
churches lay much stress upon the personal 
experience of regeneration, and a personal 
confession of faith, as conditions of church- 
membership ; but these independent spiritual 
democracies establish fellowship with each 
other as co-ordinate bodies, and by voluntary 
methods maintain the communion of the 
churches. Upon the settlement of a pastor, 
or any occasion of special interest, a church 
invites the co-operation and sanction of the 
neighboring churches through a council con- 
vened for that specific object. These churches 



m THE UNITED STATES. 91 

also meet together in conferences or conven- 
tions for spiritual improvement and for practical 
efficiency in Christian work. But such bodies 
have no power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 
Their influence is moral; but it carries with 
it the weight of collective wisdom and of 
acknowledged character. 

The Congregational theory of the Church as 
a spiritual entity tends to conserve purity of 
faith and discipline. The parish system, as 
defined in the previous section, gives civil rights 
to the ecclesiastical corporation : the church 
covenant secures the purity of the spiritual 
body. This theory of the Church also enables 
Congregationalists to recognize as churches of 
Christ all communions of believers united in 
faith in Christ as their head, whatever their 
form of polity or of worship. In such a system 
there can be nothing despotic, nothing exclu- 
sive, nothing sectarian.* Moreover, by its sim- 
plicity, Congregationalism can work in harmony 
under any form of civil government. It asks 

* As one example of the breadth of Christian liberty and unity 
in the Congregational polity, the author here presents a letter 
addressed to the renowned orator of Notre Dame in Paris, Pere 



92 CHURCH AND STATE 

only the right to be. Congregational churches 
exist mainly in New England and at the West ; 
though, of late years, they have begun to multi- 
ply in the Middle States, and even in the South. 
§ 3. Practical Working of the Free System. — - 
One obvious tendency of the separation of the 
churches from the State is to render the churches 
more jealous for their own purity in faith and 
in discipline. Each church or communion has 

Hyacinthe, on his arrival in New York, after his famous protest 
against the Vatican Council: — 

Rev. Father Hyacinthe. 

Sir, — Believing that many of your countrymen in New York would 
be glad to hear the gospel at your eloquent lips, I am happy to place the 
central and commodious church known as the Broadway Tabernacle at 
your disposal for a preaching service in French on any Sunday after- 
noon or evening. This invitation places the service under your direc- 
tion, without condition or reservation. It is given as a tribute to your 
Christian manliness and truth, and your fidelity as a preacher of the 
gospel, and in the name of that catholicity which is above all divisions 
of the Church, of that charity which is broader than names or nations, 
of that liberty which you have so nobly illustrated and maintained, of . 
that truth which you have so fearlessly proclaimed ; and, finally, in the 
name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is the Supreme Head 
of the Church Catholic and Universal. 

Accept the assurances of my profound esteem. 

JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, Pastor. 
New York, Oct. 29, 1869. 

To this Father Hyacinthe replied, that the delicacy of his rela- 
tions to his own church rendered it inexpedient for him to exercise 
his priestly functions at that time; but, should he preach at all in 
New York, he would certainly accept an invitation so free and so 
fraternal. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 93 

its own confession, and makes its own conditions 
of membership and rules of administration. The 
tendency is to draw the line sharply between 
"the Church" and " the world," and to consti- 
tute the Church according to the declaration of 
the Gospel of John : " As many as received him 
[i.e., as acknowledged Jesus to be the Christ], 
to them gave he power to become the sons of 
God, even to them that believe on his name , 
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will 
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God " 
(John i. 12, 13). Though, in some churches, chil- 
dren baptized in infancy are confirmed and admit- 
ted to the Lord's supper at a suitable age, yet, as 
a rule, a personal confession of faith, and the 
experience and evidence of a renewed heart, are 
required for admission to the full privileges of 
church-membership. Hence, in reading the sta- 
tistics of the American churches, it should be 
borne in mind that the term members by no means 
represents the total of worshippers in the several 
congregations, or of nominal adherents to a con- 
fession, but only those who by their own act 
have united with the church proper, the spiritual 
body, and who partake of its sacraments. These 
are commonly called " communicants." 



94 CHURCH AND STATE 

The Roman-Catholic Church reports as mem- 
bers all persons who are born and baptized with- 
in its pale. The Protestant churches do not 
report as members the children of communicants 
(though these have been baptized), but only those 
who by their own avowal of faith have become 
communicants. Hence the reported number of 
church-members falls very far short of the whole 
Protestant population, and also of the actual 
number who attend upon divine worship, and 
who contribute to the support of the churches. 
The efficient spiritual membership of the five 
leading Protestant communions in 1872 was as 
follows : — 



Church Organizations. 


Communicants. 


Baptists, 


18,397 


1,489,191 


Congregation alists, 


3,202 


312,054 


Episcopalians, 


2,835 


239,218 


Methodists, 


25,278 


2,047,876 


Presbyterians, 


6,275 


559,372 




55,987 


4,647.711 



To these five leading communions should be 
added, for the Lutheran, the Reformed, the Mo- 
ravian, and other smaller bodies, about 12,000 
church organizations, and 1,500,000 communi- 
cants ; giving a grand total of 68 000 Protestant 



m THE UNITED STATES. 95 

churches, with upwards of 6,000,000 communi- 
cants. But the number of persons who habitu- 
ally attend the worship of these churches is 
probably 15,000,000 ; for, on an average, from 
sixty to seventy per cent of the stated members 
of a congregation are not church-communicants. 
The Protestant population of the United States 
is computed at more than 30,000,000. 

Each church or communion makes its own 
rules for the ordination of ministers, the admis- 
sion of members, and the enforcement of disci- 
pline ; and since the communicants enter the 
body of their own free will, and can withdraw 
from it at their pleasure, without thereby affect- 
ing any civil right, the sternness of a church- 
creed or the strictness of church-discipline is a 
matter with which neither the State nor the 
public has any concern. 

Those who like an iron-bound, ecclesiastical 
organization, can enter it : those who do not 
can let it alone, and can provide for themselves 
a church more liberal in faith and practice. 

Yet both public opinion and the courts would 
interfere to protect the personal and civil 
rights of citizens if these were threatened by 



96 CHURCH AND STATE 

measures of church-discipline. A member of 
a church who had been excommunicated upon 
a charge of adultery, believed to be sustained, 
yet lacking such technical evidence as would 
satisfy a jury, brought a suit against the pas- 
tor for giving public notice of the excommu- 
nication, as an act of slander injuring his stand- 
ing in the community. The court held, that, 
in a case of public scandal affecting the pu- 
rity of a church, the church was entitled to an 
open vindication ; but, nevertheless, due caution 
must be used not to injure the good name of - an 
individual by hasty or prejudiced proceedings. 

Recently a citizen of Kalamazoo, Mich., lent 
a priest a sum of money to help build a parish, 
which the Catholic bishop refused to recognize 
subsequently as a loan. The poor man, fearing 
a foreclosure of the mortgage on his farm, 
brought suit in chancery against the bishop. 
For doing this he was forbidden to partake of 
the communion by the bishop during the episco- 
pal visit ; and the edict of excommunication was 
read to him. Fearfully frightened, he asked 
what his offence had been, and was told that he 
was excommunicated for having sued a bishop 



^ THE UNITED STATES. 97 

of the church. Bein^ a devout believer in the 
powers of the clergy, he was frightened nearly 
out of his wits, and implored the bishop to re- 
voke the excommunication. This was done on 
condition that he would withdraw his suit. He 
complied with the demand ; and the interdict 
was removed. It was too late, however ; and 
the wretched man sank beneath the weight of 
his fancied guilt, and died. The matter created 
much excitement in Michigan ; and a bill was at 
once introduced into the legislature punishing by 
a fine of from one to five thousand dollars, or im- 
prisonment from one to five years, any bishop 
or priest who shall excommunicate, or threaten 
to excommunicate, any member, to prevent him 
from commencing any suit or collecting any claim. 
The multiplicity of sects growing out of the 
spirit of freedom is thought by some to be an 
evil result of the separation of the Church from 
the State ; * but this is an instance where divis- 
ion upon subordinate points tends to a higher 

* Dr. Dsllinger of Munich, leader of the " Old Catholic " move- 
ment, when urged by the author to attend the Evangelical Alliance 
in New York, replied, " What could I hope to do for Christian union 
in a country where you make a new sect every day? " 
7 



98 CHURCH AND STATE 

unity in substantial principles. In religion, as 
in every thing else, the American people carry 
out the noble sentiment of William Penn, the 
founder of the Quaker Colony of Pennsylvania : 
" We must give the liberty we ask." In civil 
affairs, the best guaranty for my liberty is that 
an equal liberty is accorded to every other man ; 
and my freedom of conscience is made perfect 
when to every man is secured the liberty of 
believing or of not believing, of worshipping or 
of not worshipping, as he will. I should be as 
jealous for my neighbor's rights as for my own. 
Now, this habit of respecting one another's 
rights cherishes a feeling of mutual respect 
and courtesy. If, on the one hand, the spirit 
of independence fosters individualism, on the 
other it favors good-fellowship. All sects are 
equal before the law. The State does not sus- 
tain any one or two or ten, but leaves all 
equally free to consult their own welfare. In 
our homely proverb, " Every tub must stand on 
its own bottom." Hence one great cause of 
jealousy and distrust is removed ; and though, 
at times, sectarian zeal may lead to rivalries and 
controversies unfavorable to unity, on the other 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 99 

hand the independence and equality of the 
churches favor their voluntary co-operation ; and 
in no country is the practical union of Christians 
more beautifully or more beneficially exemplified 
than in the United States. With the exception 
of the Roman Catholics, Christians of all com- 
munions are accustomed to work together in the 
spirit of mutual concession and confidence, in edu- 
cational, missionary, and philanthropic measures 
for the general good. The motto of the State 
holds of the Church also, — E pluribus unum. 
As a rule, a bigoted church or a fierce sectarian 
is despised. 

Each local church defrays its expenses by 
some method of voluntary support on the part 
of its own attendants. In some churches, espe- 
cially among the Methodists, all the sittings are 
free ; and each member makes a weekly, monthly, 
or quarterly subscription toward defraying cur- 
rent expenses. But the common method of 
raising church-revenue is by the rent of pews ; 
each pew being adapted for a family, and con- 
taining from four to six sittings. Sometimes 
pews are sold to individual members of the con- 
gregation to defray the original cost of the 



100 CHURCH AND STATE 

church-building, and then are subjected to a 
yearly tax. Thus in New York, where the ex- 
pense of building and supporting a church is 
great, it is no unusual thing for a man to pay from 
one thousand to three thousand dollars for a pew, 
to be held in his own right, and a yearly tax of 
eight or ten per cent upon this cost. In other 
cases, the cost of the edifice is met by liberal 
subscriptions ; the building is dedicated to God 
as a thank-offering, free of debt, and with no 
private ownership ; and the pews are rented by 
the year or the quarter to meet current expenses. 
Usually the churches are fitted up with carpets, 
cushions, and every comfort and convenience to 
render them homelike and attractive ; especially 
are they well warmed, well lighted, well cleaned, 
and well ventilated. 

The Broadway Tabernacle Church, with 
which the author was connected for more than 
twenty-five years, upon the completion of a 
new house of worship had a debt of sixty- five 
thousand dollars. In one }^ear, twenty-five 
thousand dollars of this debt was paid off by 
free gifts, in addition to the cost of maintaining 
public worship ; and in the following year the 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 101 

remaining forty thousand dollars was paid off 
by a subscription made by the congregation at 
one single Sunday service. The yearly income 
from pew-rents was about eighteen thousand dol- 
lars.* The great popularity of Mr. Beecher (a 
brother of Mrs. Stowe) in Brooklyn creates 
such a competition for sittings in Plymouth 
Church, that the pews are put up at auction 
every year, and yield a revenue of more than 
fifty thousand dollars. This, of course, is an 
exceptional case ; but in many city churches 
the yearly revenue from pew-rents ranges from 
ten thousand to thirty thousand dollars, and 
the pews are rated from fifty up to four hundred 
dollars a year. These sums are cheerfully paid. 
The same method prevails in smaller towns and 

* In the course of twenty-five years, the Broadway Tabernacle 
Church raised by pew-rents and subscriptions, for erecting the 
church edifice and sustaining its own worship, the round sum of 
four hundred thousand dollars ; and in the same period it contrib- 
uted for home and foreign missions, theological seminaries, and 
other religious objects, the round sum of three hunlred and fifty 
thousand dollars; a total of seven hundred and fifty th )usand dollars 
from an average congregation of a thousand persons, many of 
whom possessed little property. The salary of the pastor was ad- 
vanced, with the rates of living, from two thousand to nine thou- 
sand dollars a vear. 



102 CHURCH AND STATE 

in country villages; but the rates are much 
lower, the pew-rents being graduated by the 
current expenses. 

The advantages of this system are, that it 
secures the personal interest of the members in 
their particular church, and that it makes the 
church a family institution. Families that go 
always to the same church, and sit together in 
the same pew, regard the church a& a home; and 
children grow up with this home-attachment to 
the house of God. The disadvantage of this' 
pew-system is, that it tends to the exclusion of 
the poor, and not of the poor only, but of per- 
sons of moderate income, who cannot meet 
these large demands for the expenses of public 
worship in the great cities. To obviate this 
evil, some churches have sittings graduated ac- 
cording to the means of different classes of 
worshippers ; others provide free sittings for the 
poor, or declare the galleries always free to 
strangers, or hold one service every Sunday at 
which all the seats are free to all comers. As a 
rule, every church recognizes its obligation to 
provide the preaching of the gospel for the 
masses of the community. Hence the numbei 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 103 

of cliurcli-members ; that is, persons who by 
their own free act have joined the spiritual 
body, in distinction from the society or parish. 
This number of communicants by no means 
represents the popular interest in religion. In 
the United States, as a rule, it is respectable to 
be religious ; and, in smaller communities, it 
favors one's social standing if he goes regularly 
to church. Pere Hyacinthe of Paris, after a 
journey in the New-England States, srid that 
three institutions seemed to mark an Amer- 
ican town, and to be all equally dear to the 
people, — the bank, the school, and the 
church. 

It would be a most serious error to infer, from 
the relatively small number of actual commu- 
nicants, that the majority of the population are 
irreligious or indifferent, and that the poor are 
abandoned to heathenism. There are multi- 
tudes of truly devout and godly persons who do 
not take upon themselves the responsibility of 
active church-membership; and there is a still 
greater number of non-communicants, who show 
a decent outward respect for religion without 
making a profession of piety. Upon festive 



104 CHURCH AND STATE 

occasions, and even at political conventions, it 
is quite common to request a clergyman to 
officiate as a chaplain of the assembly. In 
times of sickness or domestic sorrow, almost 
all families seek the consolations of religion. 
Almost all sufferers and mourners welcome the 
visit of a clergyman, though at other times they 
may seldom enter a church. Though marriage 
is a civil contract, almost every one prefers to 
hallow it by the sanctions of religion ; and a 
burial without a religious service is so infre- 
quent as to be regarded almost as a mark of 
heathenism. Religion is most honored where it 
is least enforced. 

In all great cities, systematic provision is 
made for the religious welfare of the poor. 
The experiment of " free churches " built for 
their special use has failed, because the pride 
of even the humblest American rebels against 
advertising his poverty and accepting a gra- 
tuity. The native American servant never asks 
for trinkgeld, and would feel insulted if this 
were offered him for every petty service ; and 
the commonest laborer would resent being 
branded as a beggar in his religion. But mis- 



IN THE UNITED STATES, 105 

sion-schools and mission-churches are established 
in the midst of the quarters of the poor. These 
are sustained chiefly by wealthy churches, or 
by mission-societies ; but the poorest worshipper 
is encouraged to give something to the church 
as an act of self-respect and a token of proprie- 
torship in the services. The mission-churches 
are neat and inviting, and have connected with 
them industrial schools. Systematic visitation 
is conducted for the relief of want ; and religion 
is presented with the hand of sympathy and the 
heart of love. In the great cities, each large 
church has schools and missions of its own; 
and churches of all confessions combine to can- 
vass every district, and to supply every family 
with the means of grace. 

For the propagation of religion in the coun- 
try new churches are built by the voluntary 
subscriptions of their members, aided, perhaps, 
by older churches of the same communion, or 
by societies which exist for this purpose. Such 
a society will agree to give so much toward 
building a church, or supporting its pastor, on 
condition that the church shall raise a certain 
specified amount within a given time. 



106 CHURCH AND STATE 

For example, the Baptist Mission Society has 
raised a fund of half a million dollars, the 
income of which is to be expended in loans, 
without interest, to aid in building churches in 
new sections of the country. There are now a 
hundred and eleven churches in twenty-four 
different States holding loans from this fund. 
In 1872 it aided in building fifty-three churches. 
The Congregational Church-Building Society 
aids about an equal number of churches yearly, 
not, however, by a loan, but by a free grant, 
upon condition that the congregation thus 
assisted will complete the house of worship free 
from debt. Other communions have modifica- 
tions of the same system ; and every church 
thus aided in its infancy becomes, in turn, a 
helper of others. 

§ 4. Financial Results of the Voluntary System. 
— In 1837, Washington Irving, in one of his 
sketches, to satirize the money-getting propen- 
sity of his countrymen, represented " the al- 
mighty dollar " as the chief divinity of the 
American people. This witty phrase has been 
caught at by foreigners as expressing the one 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 107 

universal national characteristic of Americans. 
Daniel's Geography gives it as a satirical exag- 
geration: " Der Handelsgeist der ernsten, beson- 
nenen und kalten Americaner artet oft in eine so 
unverhohlene Uebersehatzung des Mammons 
aus, dass wohl Spotter mit Uebertreibung be- 
merkt haben : trots ihrer strengen Religiositat 
sei ihr eigentlicher Golt der Dollar." * It is 
true that the people of the United States have 
shown an almost unprecedented energy in 
the development of material resources, and 
have risen rapidly both in individual and in 
national wealth. This was due, in part, to the 
necessity of their condition. Their first task 
was to subdue the continent for the occupation 
of civilized man; and the whole world now 
reaps the benefit of American utilitarianism. 
The needy and the adventurous from all nations 
rush to America to share its spoils; and the 
scholars and artists of the Old World have not 
shown themselves averse to the American dol- 
lar. As Lowell has wittily said, " All, without 
exception, make no secret of regarding us as 

* Lehrbnch der Geographie, von Prof. Dr. H. A. Daniel. 32 nnver* 
anderte Auflage, herausgegeben von Dr. A. Kirchhoflf, p. 150. 



108 CHURCH AND STATE 

the goose bound to deliver them a golden egg 
in return for their cackle." * But, as he re- 
minds us, " Human nature has a much greater 
genius for sameness than for originality ; " and, 
now that Germany has suddenly the opportu- 
nity of rapid wealth, one hears in Berlin quite 
as much talk of prices, rents, losses, and gains, 
and sees quite as much eagerness for material 
prosperity, even at the expense of the ideal life, 
as in New York itself. Even palaces are sold 
for new streets of building-lots. Meantime the 
Americans are more and more subjecting the 
material to the ideal. If heretofore they have 
worshipped the dollar, they have burnt their 
fingers in sacrificing to that Moloch, and have 
learned to consecrate the dollar to the 'noblest 
uses of humanity. 

From the very first, there was in America an 
ideal life. Schools were planted, and learning 
was cherished, from the beginning. Intellectual 
culture and spiritual refinement have been the 
characteristics of New England ; and, with the 
growth of wealth, the Americans have not for- 
gotten to cherish letters, science, and art, until 

* My Study Windows. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 109 

now museums of science founded by private 
munificence will compare favorably with those 
of the Old World, and American libraries 
and galleries purchase the treasures which 
impoverished nobles of France and Italy are 
willing to exchange for the almighty dollar. 
There exists in American society a guild of the 
cultivated, to which no money could purchase 
admission. 

From the first, religion has trained the Ameri- 
can people to believe that the dollar should be 
consecrated to God and to humanity. Yet, " till 
after our civil war, it never seemed to enter the 
head of any foreigner, especially of any English- 
man, that an American had what could be called 
a country, except as a place to eat, sleep, and 
trade in. Then it seemed to strike them sud- 
denly : ' By Jove, you know, fellahs don't fight 
like that for a shop-till.' To Americans Ameri- 
ca is something more than a promise and an ex- 
pectation. It has a past and traditions of its 
own. A descent from men who sacrificed every 
thing, and came hither, not to better their for- 
tunes, but to plant their idea in virgin soil, 
should be a good pedigree. There was never 



110 CHURCH AND STATE 

colony, save this, that went forth, not to seek 
gold, but God." * 

Americans are quite as much addicted to the 
worship of the heroic and the ideal as to the wor- 
ship of the dollar. For the memory of the past, 
for the ideals of law and liberty, they sacrificed 
three hundred thousand lives, and three thou- 
sand millions of dollars ; and now they have 
taxed " the almighty dollar " to reduce this debt 
by four hundred millions in four years. And 
in the same period they have contributed more 
than any nation of Europe, by voluntary gifts, 
for the promotion of science and art and the 
advancement of religion. 

England most nearly approaches the United 
States in private munificence for learning, re- 
ligion, and charity ; and in England a like spirit 
of freedom is found under somewhat different 
forms. 

In the year 1872, the five leading denomi- 
nations in the United States raised for their 
church-expenses, for home and foreign missions, 
for theological institutes, &c, the following 
sums: — 

* Lowell: My Study Windows, p. 75. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. Ill 

The Baptists, $3,391,276 

The Congregationalists, about 4,000,000 

The Episcopalians, 6,304,608 

The Methodists, 17,427,184 

The Presbyterians, 11,070,325 
(The Presbyterians raised, in 1870, over eight million ; 
in 1871, over nine million.) 

Add to these the Lutherans, the Reformed, 
and other communions, and the sum expended 
for religious uses by the whole body of Protes- 
tant churches in 1872 was at least fifty million 
dollars. The property held by these churches, 
the most of it originally purchased by the con- 
tributions of their membership, is valued at 
nearly three hundred million dollars. Such are 
some of the fruits of voluntary religion in the 
United States. A people who would enjoy the 
luxury of perfect religious liberty must relin- 
quish all church-aid from the State or the Com- 
mune, and be willing to pay out of their own 
pockets the full cost of maintaining the church 
of their choice. When once they have learned 
to do this, they will love to do it. 



112 CHURCH AND STATE 



SECTION VI. 

INCIDENTAL RELATIONS OF THE STATE TO 
RELIGION. 

§ 1. It has been held by English courts that 
Christianity is a part of the common law of the 
land; but the attempt to establish the same 
doctrine in the United States has been over- 
ruled by the highest judicial authority. Some 
years ago, Mr. Stephen Girard bequeathed to 
the city of Philadelphia lands and money for the 
establishment of a college for orphans, upon 
the condition that no minister of any religion 
should ever be admitted within its walls, and 
no tenets of any sect should be taught to the 
pupils. The heirs-at-law of Mr. Girard at- 
tempted to set aside this will ; and Mr. Daniel 
Webster, familiarly called the " Expounder of 
the Constitution," argued, on their behalf, that 
Christianity was a part of the common law, 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 113 

and therefore the attempt of the testator to 
exclude the Christian religion from his college 
was illegal, and the bequest was void. But the 
decisions of the courts upon this and parallel 
cases involving the same principle were to this 
effect ; viz., " Though certain features of the 
common law may have been derived from the 
Christian religion, the law does not attempt to 
enforce the precepts of Christianity on the 
ground of their sacred character or divine ori- 
gin. Christianity is not a part of the law of 
the land in the sense that would entitle the 
courts to take notice of and base their judg- 
ments upon it, except so far as they should find 
that its precepts had been incorporated in, and 
thus become a component part of, the law." 
(See Vidal vs. Girard Executors, 2 How. 198 ; 
Andrew vs. Bible Society, 4 Sanclford, 182 ; and 
Cooley, " Constitutional Limitations," p. 472.) 
The recent proposal to amend the Constitution 
by a declaration that the Christian religion is 
the obligatory rule of national life does not 
meet with much favor from the clergy or from 
the religious press. 

§ 2. The Oath. — The Constitution of the 



114 CHURCH AND STATE 

United States requires that the President, be- 
fore entering upon the execution of his office, 
shall take the following oath or affirmation : "I 
do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faith- 
fully execute the office of President of the 
United States ; and will, to the best of my abili- 
ty, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitu- 
tion of the United States " (Art. II., sect. 1, § 9). 
Art. VI., sect. 3, provides, also, that the sena- 
tors and representatives of the National Con- 
gress, and the members of the several State 
legislatures, and all executive and judicial 
officers both of the United States and of the 
several States, " shall be bound by oath or affir- 
mation to support this Constitution." It will 
be seen from the form of the oath prescribed to 
the President that no religious ceremonies or 
sanctions are attached to this solemnity; but 
a simple affirmation, such as a Quaker might 
make, would meet the requirements of the case. 
In some of the States, however, it is required 
of a witness, before taking an oath, that he 
shall declare his belief in the existence of God, 
and in a state of rewards and punishments after 
the present life. This is the old principle of 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 115 

the common law; but several States have ex- 
pressly abolished this declaration of religious 
belief as preliminary to the taking of an oath. 
The real question in the case does not concern 
the faith of the witness, but his veracity or 
trustworthiness ; and the immediate fear of 
imprisonment for perjury may be more salutary 
than the remote fear of punishment in a future 
state. 

§ 3. Religious Days, — The Constitution of 
the United States contains an indirect re- 
cognition of Sunday as a dies non. It is 
in these words : " If any bill shall not be 
returned by the President within ten days 
{Sundays excepted) after it shall have been 
presented to him, the same shall be a law 
in like manner as if he had signed it." In 
some of the States there are stringent Sunday 
laws, which prohibit secular employments upon 
that day, and impose various restrictions upon 
public amusements. Such laws are, for the 
most part, a tradition of the old Puritan sab- 
bath, which, with all its formal and doctrinal 
strictness, has had much to do with the develop- 
ment of that moral manhood for which New 



116 CHURCH AND STATE 

England especially has been distinguished. In 
their re-action against mere " commandments 
and traditions of men," as these were enforced 
in the Romish Church, the Puritans so magni- 
fied the authority of the Bible as to make it the 
rule of practice for the citizen, as well as the 
rule of faith for the Christian. Rejecting 
the saints' days and other sacred days imposed 
by ecclesiastical authority, they revived the 
Jewish sanctity of the sabbath, and enacted the 
fourth commandment into a series of laws, 
which forbade work, travel, pleasure, on the 
Lord's Day, and even required attendance at 
church.* In all this the motive was good, but 

* Some European writers on America have been misled by a 
book, published in London in 1781, giving the so-called " Blue 
Laws" of New Haven: "No one shall travel, cook victuals, make 
beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the sabbath day. No 
woman shall kiss her child on the sabbath or fasting day. No one 
shall read Common Prayer, keep Christmas or saint days, make 
minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music 
except the drum, trumpet, and jew's-harp. Every male shall have 
his hair cut round according to a cap." These " Blue Laws " are 
a pure fiction. No trace of such rules, nor of any thing like them, 
can be found in the legislation of the Colony. Just before the war 
of Independence, one Samuel Peters, a notorious liar, made himself 
so obnoxious as a royalist, that he was obliged to flee; and he took 
his revenge by publishing in England a fictitious satire upon the 
Puritans. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 117 

the policy was mistaken. As Fronde has said, 
" When nations can grow to maturity in a 
single generation, when the child can rise from 
his first grammar-lesson a matured philosopher, 
individual men may clear themselves by a single 
effort from mistakes which are embedded in the 
heart of their age.". Of late years, however, 
the tendency has been to modify or repeal all 
special Sunday laws, or to allow them to become 
a dead letter. So far as they have been tested 
before the courts, they have been defended 
mainly upon two grounds, — the right of the 
citizen to the quiet and peaceable enjoyment of 
public worship in the exercise of his religious 
liberty ; and the expediency, upon sanitary and 
moral grounds, of a weekly cessation from 
labor, with a suitable restriction upon tempta- 
tions to vice. 

For a like reason, as a precaution against 
drunkenness and riotous behavior, the laws pro- 
vide, that, on election-ckiys and holidays, places 
where intoxicating drinks are sold shall be 
closed. Sunday laws and sumptuary laws are 
often criticised and ridiculed as, a peculiarity of 
" Puritan " New England ; but, before the set- 



118 CHURCH AND STATE 

tlement of Massachusetts, in Virginia, where 
the Church of England was established, every 
colonist was obliged to attend church twice 
every Sunday, " upon pain, for the first fault, to 
iose their provision and allowance for the whole 
week following ; for the second, to lose said 
allowance, and also to be whipped ; and, for the 
third, to suffer death." (Hening, Statutes at 
Large, i. 123, 144, 261. See in Palfrey, 
"History of New England," ii. 34.) Such 
legislation was borrowed from English pre- 
cedents, and long ago passed from American 
statute-books. The intent of existing Sunday 
laws in America is not to coerce conscience, nor 
to enforce worship, but to secure order and 
decorum upon the stated religious holiday. 
Such laws, however, derive their force chiefly 
from the prevailing public sentiment, and are 
an attempt to embody in legislation the average 
moral sense of the community. As has been 
said in the previous section, American society 
is largely pervaded ' by the sentiment of defer- 
ence to religion. It is respectable to be reli- 
gious, or at least to show a respect for religion. 
The wealthy and cultivated classes are accus- 



IJST THE UNITED STATES. 119 

tomed to attend church. The leading men of the 
community are often communicants* Hence 
the custom of opening the sessions of Congress 
and of the State legislatures with prayer, of 
appointing chaplains to the army and the navy, 
and of designating by public authority days of 
thanksgiving * and of fasting, has the sanction 
of public opinion, and is not looked upon as an 
intrusion by the State into the domain of reli- 
gious freedom. When New-Year's Day, Wash- 
ington's Birthday, the Fourth of July, or any 
other festival, falls upon a Sunday, the following 
Monday is observed as the holiday ; and the 
sabbath is kept with religious quiet as usual. 
In many States, houses of religious worship are 
exempted from taxation for the support of the 
civil government, upon the ground that religion, 
as a conservator of public morals, assists in pre- 
serving the peace and order of society (see 
in Cooley, p. 471). 

§4. Jealousy of Ecclesiastics. — Upon the 
other hand, some of the State constitutions 
make the ministers of any religion ineligible to 
civil office by reason of their ecclesiastical 

* Appendix I. 



120 CHURCH AND STATE- 

functions. This proscription of the clergy as a 
class was probably cine to that jealousy of 
ecclesiastical meddling in civil affairs which the 
Jesuits had already awakened in some of the 
infant Colonies, and which passed over by 
tradition to some even of the newer States. The 
tendency of the Roman-Catholic Church, from 
its very organization, is to constitute an ira- 
perium in imperio ; and it may yet become in 
the United States an organic power of per- 
petual revolution against the State. Hence 
some American patriots have contended that 
Roman Catholics should be excluded from 
office, and even from the polls, because history 
had shown their church to be inimical to liberty. 
Twenty years ago, a political party was formed, 
with the secret watchword " Know-Nothing," 
for the purpose of shutting out Catholics from 
political privileges ; but, as soon as its purpose 
was known,- the party was discarded by the 
good sense of the people and their love of fair 
play. We cannot forget, that, in English 
history, Puritans and evangelical reformers were 
treated as enemies of the State ; and that the 
power of political proscription for religious 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 121 

opinions is a two-edged sword, and might be 
turned by the dominant party against any class 
of citizens. So was it, in fact, in the reigns of 
Henry VIII. and of Queen Elizabeth in Eng- 
land. 

Moreover, United-States law is wisely jealous 
of " constructive treason ; " and the National 
Constitution expressly declares that " treason 
against the United States shall consist only in 
levying war against them, or in adhering to 
their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." 
It would be contrary to the whole spirit of 
American institutions to proscribe Roman 
Catholics as a class, or their clergy, or any order 
within their church, simply upon suspicion of 
political intrigue; but if found guilty of con- 
spiring against the government, either as indi- 
viduals or as a society, they could be dealt with, 
not as Catholics, but as rebels or traitors. A 
secret order in the Southern States, known as 
the Ku-Klux, which was conspiring against the 
government, has been outlawed, and its mem- 
bers punished by court-martial. Had they 
claimed to be a religious order, acting for the 
" higher interests " of the Church, this could 



122 CHURCH AND STATE 

not Lave shielded them from punishment as 
conspirators. 

The discrimination against the clergy as a 
class, in some of the State constitutions, is an 
anomaly as contrary to the spirit of religious 
liberty as would be the erection of an Estab- 
lished Church. The State of New York 
has abolished this feature, which marred its 
early constitution. As a rule, clergymen decline 
political honors ; though some have been mem- 
bers of Congress and of various State legisla- 
tures, and have held offices in the civil service 
of the United States. As a body, they have 
been eminently loyal and patriotic ; and, in times 
of public peril, they have rendered efficient 
service to the country.* 

* The following example, of which the author was an -eye-wit- 
ness, will illustrate how ministers and churches in America uphold 
the government, without seeking for themselves any favor from the 
State. The Broadway Tabernacle Church (Congregational) in 
New York has already been mentioned. From this congregation 
five and twenty young men voluntarily enlisted in the army. Five 
of these died in the service, of whom two were brought home to be 
buried lovingly from the bosom of the church. The Sanitary, 
Christian, and Union Commissions had its constant and energetic 
support. The great fairs were largely officered and equipped from the 
women of this congregation. By solemn vote and prayer they sent 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 123 

The pulpit in the United States has ever been 
among the foremost of social forces, stimulating 
the people to intellectual life, encouraging cul- 

their pastor to minister upon the battle-fields of Tennessee: they 
greeted his return with fresh outpourings of bounty for the soldiers. 
Again and again they draped organ and pulpit with flags, and made 
the church a rally ing-ground for Liberty and Union under the up- 
lifted banner of the cross; and, when all was over, they held a 
majestic requiem for three hundred thousand dead. 

But there was one incident of the war which signalized the loyal 
devotion of this church to the country and to Christ. It was in that 
darkest hour when delays and defeats had so blighted hope, that 
treason came out from its lurking-places in the North, and hissed 
its venom at the government; when the President hesitated either 
to enforce the draft or to call for volunteers ; and when timid con- 
servatives began to say, " We had better give it up, and make 
terms." - The pastor came into the pulpit with a plea for Chris- 
tian manhood, saying, " Of what avail are our churches if we shall 
no longer have a government or a country? Of what worth is our 
Christianity if it cannot preserve these ? If the government cannot 
save the country, let the churches save both. Let this church call 
for volunteers ; equip a regiment, and put it into the field, to show 
that we will never give it up." At the close of the service, some 
one called upon the congregation to remain ; proposed a subscription 
for a church regiment; and, before night of that memorable sab- 
bath, upwards of thirty thousand dollars were laid upon the altar. 
Two women sent each five hundred dollars, saying, " We cannot 
go: put men in our stead." That action went like a flash of elec- 
tricity through the land. It brought letters of thanks from senators 
at Washington, from members of the cabinet, from generals in the 
field. It cheered the burdened heart of the President, and gave new 
courage to his indomitable Minister of War. 



124 CHURCH AND STATE 

ture and science, and creating a public senti- 
ment outside of the Church itself for all that is 
true and noble and good. The ministrj^ attracts 
to it a large percentage of the best minds of 
the country. The training for the pastoral 
office, in most denominations, is thorough and 
severe. As a rule, when a boy has pursued the 
common-school education till thirteen or four- 
teen, he enters a classical academy, where he 
remains for three years in special preparation 
for college. In this time he studies Sallust, 
Csesar, Cicero, Virgil, Xenophon's " Anabasis," 
Homer's " Iliad," arithmetic, algebra, geometry, 
grammar, geography, &c. ; and he must pass a 
strict examination in these branches in order to 
be admitted to college. Next he spends four 
years in college, where he studies, in Latin, Livy, 
Horace, Cicero, Juvenal, Plautus, Tacitus ; in 
Greek, Homer, Herodotus, iEschylus, Sopho- 
cles, Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydicles ; in math- 
ematics, geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, 
differential and integral calculus, physics, me- 
chanics, astronomy ; also the French and Ger- 
man languages, comparative philology, rhetoric, 
logic, history (Grecian, Iloman, Mediaeval, and 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 125 

English), mental philosophy, political economy 
and philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, 
geology, botany. These studies are, for the 
most part, obligatory, and are tested by rigid 
examinations. The college is the academic 
faculty of the university ; and, after this 
course of four years in general culture, the can- 
didate for the ministry passes under the special 
faculty for theology. Here he remains for 
three years longer in the study of Hebrew 
grammar and philology, Greek exegesis, dog- 
matic, symbolic, natural theology, church his- 
tory, church polity, Christian literature, sacred 
rhetoric and homiletics, and pastoral theology. 
In the theological faculty, all lectures are free; 
and the students are provided with comfortable 
rooms, text-books, &c, free of charge. Large 
sums are given by the churches for the educa- 
tion of the clergy. A learned ministry is the 
strength of religion in America. 

§ 5. The State and Morality. — The State is, 
in its own nature, both jural and ethical. It is 
grounded in moral reasons, and exists for moral 
ends. Hence it has authority to suppress vice 
and crime, and whatever outrages morality and 



126 CHURCH AND STATE 

decency. The plea of conscience or of religious 
liberty cannot be used to cover offences against 
the moral sense of the community, or against 
the peace and order of the family and of soci- 
ety. The Supreme Court of Ohio has ruled 
that " acts evil in their nature, or dangerous to 
the public welfare, may be forbidden and pun- 
ished, though sanctioned by one religion, and 
prohibited by another : but this creates no pref- 
erence whatever ; for they would be equally for- 
bidden and punished if all religions permitted 
them. Thus no plea of religion could shield a 
murderer, a ravisher, or a bigamist ; for the com- 
munity would be at the mercy of superstition 
if such crimes as these could be committed 
with impunity because sanctioned by some reli- 
gious delusion " (Bloom vs. Richards, 2 Ohio 
State Reports, 390, 391). It is upon this ground, 
as was shown in the first section, that the State 
can deal with bigamy and polygamy as offences 
against the well-being of society ; though the 
Mormons have sought to cover them with the 
sanctions of religion. 

The ethics of society control the legislation 
of the United States upon adultery, bigamy, 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 127 

drunkenness, indecency, and like social vices 
affecting the public morality. All such offences 
are dealt with by the State as a moral and 
ethical being having charge of the welfare of 
society. Immoral exhibitions, actions, and pub- 
lications are by law suppressed in the United 
States more rigorously and effectively than in 
most countries of Europe : * for the conviction 
that underlies all moral and ethical legislation 
is, that the safeguards of freedom are intelli- 
gence and virtue ; that since intemperance and 
immorality cast upon society the burdens of 
pauperism, of disease, of illegitimacy, impair 
the fitness of the citizen for his duties as an 
elector, and demoralize the community, there- 
fore, as a measure of self-protection, the State, 

* A bill to prevent the mailing of obscene books, papers, articles, 
and advertisements, has passed Congress, and been signed by the 
President. The person who "knowingly deposits, or causes to be 
deposited, for mailing or delivery," obscene articles, publications, or 
advertisements, in the post-office, and the person who, "in pursu- 
ance of any plan or scheme for disposing " of any of the indecent 
books or articles advertised, takes them from the mails, are alike 
deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be 
fined from a hundred to five thousand dollars, with costs; or impris- 
oned at hard labor from one to ten years, or both, in the discretion 
of the court. 



128 CHURCH AND STATE 

as a corporate being, whose very existence im- 
plies jural and ethical functions, can and must 
put forth its power to sustain good morals, 
and thus to preserve a free political society. 

A very large percentage of vice and crime 
in the United States, especially in the great 
cities, is chargeable to European immigration. 
The police statistics of New York show that 
the vast majority of persons arrested for crimi- 
nal offences are of European birth ; and of 
these, again, the great majority are natives of 
Ireland.* Thus, reared under the European 

* Of 80, 532? persons arrested by the police of New York in 1867, 
only 27,156 were of American birth; and, of the 53,376 foreigners 
who disturbed the peace of the city, 38,128 were Irish. From 1860 
to 1868, there were, within the precincts of the New- York metropoli- 
tan police, 706,288 arrests. Of these there were 204,129 Americans; 
the foreigners numbering 502,159, of which 373,341 were Irish. 
This preponderance of foreign-born criminals is not peculiar to New 
York, where, naturally, the worst elements of immigration would 
remain. The same ratio appears in the country at large. 

The following facts are authentic. In prison in the United States, 

on June 1, 1871, there were 32,901 persons, thus distributed: — 

Total prisoners - 32,901 

Native whites 16,117 

Colored people .... - 8,056 

Foreign born 8,728 

Total population 38,558,371 

Native white population 28,111,133 

Colored population 4,880,009 

Foreign-born population 5,567,229 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 129 

system of State religions, persons baptized, 
taught, and confirmed in State churches, or, as 
in Ireland, reared under the imperious ecclesi- 
astical authority of Rome, become the outlaws 
of American society. America owes to Europe 
those two deadly foes of evangelical religion, 
Romanism and Rationalism ; while Mormonism 
is recruited almost entirely from Northern Eu- 
rope. Hence the feeling is quite prevalent in 
the United States, that a system of State religion 
tends toward a practical heathenism and unbe- 
lief ; that its training tends to substitute forms 
and dogmas for a personal religious faith, and 
its restraints and compulsions tend to produce a 
re-action against all belief : while the free reli- 
gious system of the United States develops in 

Showing that (assuming all in prison to be criminals) there is, at 
least, one criminal in every 1,172 of the population, one in every 
1,744 of our native white population, one in every 637 of our for- 
eign-horn population, and one in every 605 of our colored popula- 
tion. 

When European journals picture crime as abounding in the 
United States, they should have the candor to add, that, though 
foreigners compose only one-sixth of the total white population, 
they furnish one-third of the white criminals, and, in the ratio of 
criminals, are on a level with the ignorant and degraded negroes. 
Their crimes are not a fruit of American society. 
9 



130 CHURCH AND STATE 

churcli-m embers the sense of personal responsi- 
bility and the spirit of religious activity; and 
the exhibition of these commands the respect 
of the community for religion, and infuses into 
society a healthy moral sentiment, which, in 
turn, sustains the State in enforcing essential 
morality by the authority of law. De Tocque- 
ville was profoundly impressed with this feature 
of American society. He said, " Religion in 
America takes no direct part in the government 
of society : but it must be regarded as the first 
of their political institutions ; for, if it does not 
impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use 
of it. Thus, whilst the law permits the Ameri- 
cans to do what they please, religion prevents 
them from conceiving, and forbids them to com- 
mit, what is rash or unjust." — Democracy in 
America, chap. xvii. 

§6. The State and Education. — Most of the 
States make provision in their constitutions for 
a sj^stem of free public education. This was 
the first care of the New-England Puritans ; 
and the Congress of the United States has aided 
this system by large grants of money and of 
lands. Eight million acres of national land 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 131 

have been given to scientific schools in different 
States. The common schools are supported 
either b}^ annual grants from the State treasury, 
or by taxes levied directly upon the inhabitants 
of each school-district. Hence the privileges of 
the schools are either free to the pupils, or are 
furnished at a very slight cost. 

By general consent, the Bible was, for a long 
time, read in the public schools as a daily exer- 
cise ; or the schools were opened with the sing- 
ing of a hymn and the repetition of the Lord's 
Prayer : but, this being objected to by Roman 
Catholics, the custom has been in many cases 
abandoned, or modified to meet their prejudices. 
The following extracts from the " Code of Public 
Instruction in the State of New York " set forth 
the principles upon which specific religious in- 
struction is excluded from the public schools : — 

" The object of the common-school system of 
this State is to afford means of secular instruc- 
tion to all children over five and under twenty- 
one years of age resident therein. For their 
religious training the State does not provide, 
and with this it does not interfere. The advan- 
tages of the school are to be free to all alike. 



132 CHURCH AND STATE 

No distinction is to be made between Christians, 
whether Protestants or Romanists ; and the 
consciences of none can be legally violated. 
There is no authority in the law to use, as a 
matter of right, any portion of the regular 
school-hours in conducting any religious exer- 
cises at which the attendance of the scholars is 
made compulsory. On the other hand, there is 
nothing to prevent the reading of the Scrip- 
tures, or the performance of other religious 
exercises by the teacher, in the presence of 
such of the scholars as may attend voluntarily, 
or by the direction of their parents or guar- 
dians, if this be done before the hour fixed for 
the opening of the school, or after the dismissal 
of the school. 

" Neither the common-school system nor any 
other social system can be maintained unless 
the conscientious views of all are equally re- 
spected. The simple rule, so to exercise your 
own right as not to infringe on those of others, 
will preserve equal justice among all, promote 
harmony, and insure success to our schools. 

" The money to support schools comes from 
the people at large, irrespective of sect or de- 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 133 

nomination. Consequently, instruction of a 
sectarian or religious-denominational character 
must be avoided ; and teachers must conform 
themselves, during school-hours, to their legiti- 
mate and proper duties." 

These principles are now generally accepted 
and practically observed. But it is fairly within 
the province of the teacher to give instruction 
in the historical portions of the Bible, in the 
history of Christianity and of other religions, 
and also in the principles of ethics and the rules 
of moral action- as these have been developed 
under Christian civilization. The attempt of 
the Roman Catholics to pervert the schools to 
their own ends will not be endured by the 
American people. The moral tone of the 
school will depend very much upon the charac- 
ter and spirit of the teacher, and his wisdom in 
imparting counsel without recourse to dogma.* 

It would be a great mistake to infer, that, for 



* For a full statement of the relations of the common schools in 
the United States to religion and morality, the author refers to his 
testimony given to the Educational Commission of the British Parlia- 
ment for Manchester and Salisbury, and published in the Parlia- 
mentaiy Blue Book for 18.53. 



134 CHURCH AND STATE 

lack of a positive confessional training in the 
public schools, children in the United States 
grow up in ignorance of the truths of religion : 
on the contrary, in no country are the children 
better instructed in religion than are the chil- 
dren of the native population in the United 
States. Though legal decisions have been ren- 
dered against any formal religious instruction 
in schools supported by the State, yet the lack 
of such instruction in the common schools is 
largely supplied by means of Sunday schools, 
which are supported voluntarily by the churches, 
and into which at least five millions of children 
are freely gathered to be taught religious truth. 
These schools are the nurseries of piety for the 
Church, and of morality for the State. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 135 






SECTION VII. 

SUMMARY OF PRINCIPLES £KD RESULTS. 

§ 1. General Principles. — Our analysis and 
discussion have brought out the following prin- 
ciples as fundamental to the relations of Church 
and State in the United States : — 

(1.) Religious liberty is everywhere recognized 
as an absolute personal right. Religious tolera- 
tion is simply a concession by the State to Dissent- 
ers ; but, by the American doctrine, the State has 
no authority over conscience, and therefore can 
make no concessions within the proper domain 
of conscience. " Toleration is not the opposite 
of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. 
Both are despotisms. The one assumes to 
itself the right of withholding liberty of con- 
science ; the other, of granting it." The Ameri- 
can theory admits of neither. In the Virginia 
Declaration of Rights, James Madison pro- 



136 CHURCH AND STATE 

posed for the phrase, " All men should enjoy the 
fullest toleration in the exercise of religion," the 
words, " All men are equally entitled to the free 
exercise of religion ; " and thus he formulated 
the principle of religious liberty in all its length 
and breadth. Freedom of thought and speech 
on religion, freedom of religious faith and wor- 
ship, freedom of religious association, — these 
are rights which the State cannot give, and 
must not restrict. The rights are derived from 
God, and from the spiritual nature of man : 
they inhere in the subject-matter of religion, 
which demands unrestricted intercourse between 
the soul and God. The State should -recognize 
these rights, and protect them, but cannot 
interfere with them. 

(2.) As a corollary from this fundamental 
principle, the American doctrine teaches that 
no religious test shall be attached to any of the 
functions or privileges of the citizen. 

(3.) No form of belief or worship shall be 
set up, endowed, or patronized, by the State ; 
not only no .one form, but no two nor ten 
forms, — no form whatever. 

(4.) No man shall be restrained in his own 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 137 

belief or disbelief by any civil penalty or pro- 
scription. 

(5.) No man shall be ta ^ed directly or indi- 
rectly, or in any way compelled, for the support 
of the religion of another. 

§ 2. Anomalies in Practice. — The practice of 
the American people has not always been up to 
this high theoretical standard. But, on the 
other hand, the doctrine of religious liberty was 
not an original thesis of political philosophy 
laid down by the founders of American society, 
but grew out of divers methods and experiences 
which were more than a century in evolving 
this final formula. Hence the earlier relations 
of Church and State in the Colonies present 
anomalies in legislation, which became so fixed 
in the habits of the people, that laws and 
usages now seen to be incongruous with a per- 
fect theory of free government were retained 
in some of the States for a considerable period 
after the war of Independence. Such incon- 
gruities are more and more pruned away, leav- 
ing the principle of religious liberty to its 
normal and healthy growth. 

§ 3. Qualifications of the Principle. — As in 



138 CHURCH AND STATE 

physics, so in ethics, the abstract principles of 
philosophy sometimes call for qualifications or 
compensations in practice. Religious liberty 
must not be abused to immoral practices nor to 
treasonable ends. For self-preservation, for 
social order, for public decency, the State must 
suppress vice or treason, and punish the offend- 
ers, however loudly they may profess to obey 
their consciences. The American people know 
how to respect scruples of conscience when 
these take the form of " passive obedience" to 
an obnoxious law ; as, for instance, in the Quaker, 
who refuses to pay taxes, or to perform military 
service, but makes no resistance to the officer 
who levies upon his goods, or restrains him of his 
liberty. But the defiant resistance of the Mor- 
mons to United-States laws and courts will be put 
down by force, without respect to the plea of 
religion. The American people honor the sen- 
timent of Peter, that "it is right to obey God 
rather than man ; " and they applaud the heroic 
protest of Luther at Worms, " Hier stehe ich : ich 
Jcann nieht anders; Grott helfe mir" But when the 
god set higher than man is a foreign potentate, 
who asserts his supremacy over the State ; when 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 139 

the conscience that claims to be inviolate is a 
church embodied as a political infallibility, and 
enthroned above all civil laws and institutions, — 
then the people say, " Society has rights as sacred 
as the rights of conscience. Government, no 
less than religion, is from God. Conscience shall 
not harbor conspiracy ; religion shall not foster 
revolution ; your pious devotion shall not plot 
our destruction." One may preach polygamy 
as the ideal paradise of Mohammed, and may 
predict the millennium of the seraglio ; but he 
may not put his theory into practice under pain 
of the penitentiary. One may preach a theoc- 
racy as the ideal form of government, and, like 
the Millenarian fanatics of the seventeenth 
century — the " Fifth - Monarchy Men " — in 
England, or the Anabaptists of Minister in the 
♦sixteenth, may prophesy that the " stone cut 
without hands " is soon to dash to pieces all the 
governments of the world ; but woe betide him 
who should attempt to dash that stone against the 
Constitution of the United States! The State 
concedes to every citizen the right to carry his 
religious notions to the extreme of folly, his 
religious practice to the extravagance of enthu- 



140 CHURCH AND STATE 

siasm. So long as his actions are harmless, his 
vagaries are left to the corrective of public dis- 
cussion. He may pretend to have received from 
heaven the torch of truth, and may wave this 
aloft to enlighten the world ; but if he should 
fire the library, the treasury, the capitol, he 
would find that liberty itself has an asylum for 
the madman, a prison for the incendiary, a 
gallows for the traitor. 

§ 4. Traits of American Character. — Ameri- 
cans are sometimes thought to be indifferent to 
any thing beyond their present material inter- 
ests, and also to have a weakness for novelties 
and extravagances which makes them the 
dupes of spiritual imposture. Hence many in 
Europe believe either that the United States 
will be given over to the delusions of Spiritual- 
ism, Mormonism, &c, or will yet fall a prey to 
the machinations of the Jesuits, through the 
very liberty which the people are too indifferent 
to conserve. That promiscuous book-maker, 
Hepworth Dixon, has been taken for an 
authority ; and his jackal propensity for social 
carrion — shown also in his book on Russia — 
has been transferred to the nation which he has 
slandered. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 141 

As to Mormonisin, so far as the native popu- 
lation of the United States are concerned, this 
has had its clay. Though this fungus has fas- 
tened itself upon the tree of American liberty, 
it draws its sustenance from foreign roots. The 
whole population of Utah is less than ninety 
thousand : of these, thirty thousand are of 
foreign birth ; and of the remainder, full sixty 
per cent are children of foreign parents. The 
ratio of residents not Mormons is now rapidly 
increasing since the completion of the Pacific 
Railroad ; and the popular conviction in the 
United States is, that the Mormon community, 
hemmed in by a normal society, will die of 
inanition. Many dupes of the system are ready 
to abandon it ; and the death of Brigham Young 
might lead to the disintegration of the com- 
munity. President Grant is disposed to try what 
resources there may be in United-States law for 
bringing the Mormons under the common social 
order of the republic ; but public sentiment 
would leave the delusion to a natural death. 
In any event, it is doomed. 

As to Spiritualism, this, under all its phases, 
allures but a small percentage of the American 



142 CHURCH AND STATE 

people. The system is not more prevalent in 
the United States than in some countries of 
Europe ; though the American habit of public 
discussion has made it more prominent. 

The growth of Romanism in the United States 
may give more serious cause for anxiety ; * but 
this also has been exaggerated through fear, and 
by overlooking some compensating elements of 
the problem. True, the fact stares us in the 
face, that the Roman Catholics have trebled 
their churches in the last twenty years. 

Churches. Value. 

In 1850, 1,222 $9,256,758 

" 1860, 2,550 26,774,119 

" 1870, 3,806 60,985,566 

The great increase of value is due to the 
enhancement of all property since the war, and 
to the fact that the Roman-Catholic churches 
are chiefly in the cities. Hence, though their 
church-property represents a sixth of the total 
valuation of church-property in the country, in 

* For a good discussion of this subject, the reader is referred to 
the valuable articles of Dr. Friedrich Kapp in the Gegenwart for 
March, 1873. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 143 

point of number their churches are only a six- 
teenth of the whole. The Roman Catholics 
claim five million adherents ; but, by the natu- 
ral ratio of births, they should have at least a 
million more. Many drop away from their 
communion, whose loss is never reported ; while 
the few proselytes from Protestantism are trum- 
peted abroad. 

Moreover, the Irish immigration, which has 
been the main feeder of the Roman-Catholic 
Church in the United States, has reached its 
maximum, and shows symptoms of decline* 
The German immigration, fifty per cent of 
which is Protestant, already exceeds it ; and the 
improved condition of Ireland will tend to keep 
her population at home.* 

With the growing consciousness of num- 
bers and of wealth, the Roman-Catholic 
Church in the United States becomes more 
arrogant in its utterances. One incidental 
effect of the separation of the Roman-Catholic 
Church from the State is to make its clergy 
more absolutely dependent upon Rome. With 

* For the German element in the United States, see Appen- 
dix II. 



144 CHURCH AND STATE 

no temporal prince to fall back upon, they bow 
implicitly to the mandates of the pope. Hence 
American prelates voted for the infallibility 
dogma ; and the most intellectual organ of that 
church in New York asserts the authority of 
the Church over the State, even in civil con- 
cerns. " While the State has rights, she has 
them only in virtue and by permission of the 
superior authority : and that authority can only 
be expressed through the Church; that is, 
through the organic law infallibly announced 
and unchangeably asserted, regardless of tem- 
poral consequences." * The power of the ballot, 
wielded by Catholic hands, is invoked to estab- 
lish this authority of the Church. Now, the 
American people are long-suffering. It is too 
much their habit to trust in the laisser-faire 
policy. Like Mr. Micawber, they wait for 
" something to turn up," and leave things to 
take their course. Hence the plotters of mis- 
chief may, for a time, have their own way. 

Moreover, the American citizen is apt to be 
too intent upon his own affairs to give much 

* The Catholic World, July, 1872. 



IxV THE UNITED STATES, 145 

heed to affairs of State. He is pre-occupied 
with his own calling. The apostolic precept 
which he most devoutly fulfils is " to provide 
for his own." Hence " rings" can work their 
way into office, and Jesuits can hatch conspira- 
cies, because the better class of citizens are too 
busy to take note of them. 

These two characteristics of the American 
people often cause them to be misunderstood at 
home and abroad. But deeper than these, and 
stronger by far, is a sterling devotion to right, 
justice, law, government ; and when these are 
invaded or threatened, when society is in peril, 
when government is assailed, when the founda- 
tions of public order are disturbed, then these 
same men who have been so eager in their own 
affairs, so easy-going toward public affairs, will 
drop all private business, and take things into 
their own hands with a tremendous energy of 
purpose, and tenacity of will, that nothing can 
withstand. Thus slavery was demolished ; 
thus the New- York ring was broken and scat- 
tered ; and thus, too, will political Romanism be 
trampled out. 

The loyalty of Americans is hard to be un- 
10 



146 CHURCH AND STATE 

derstood in Europe, because it presents nothing 
that is tangible ; but, in this very loyalty to an 
ideal, the practical Americans show the philo- 
sophic side of their character. The Pilgrim 
Fathers brought with them the Church and the 
State, each as a spiritual essence, but also as a 
living power. Three thousand miles behind 
them they had left bishops and clergy, cathe- 
dral and ritual, the pomp and circumstance of 
the Establishment ; but there, in the cabin of 
" The Mayflower," was the church of believ- 
ing, praying souls, borne, as of old, in the ark 
above the flood, and with the holy dove as its 
symbol of peace. Three thousand miles behind 
them they had left king and nobles, parliament 
and courts, all the insignia of government ; but 
there, in the cabin of " The Mayflower," was 
the primordial State, the sentiment of justice, 
of order, of law, enthroning itself in an au- 
thority chosen by the whole for the good of the 
whole. The dialectic mind of the American 
people is much given to such abstractions of 
ethical and political philosophy ; and nowhere 
have these been more refined upon, or more 
sharply defined. Yet these abstractions stand 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 147 

forth as concrete realities, when law, govern- 
ment, liberty, are assailed ; and then the practi- 
cal American will firfit for them against all 
comers. This the Romish hierarchy may one 
day learn to their cost, if they shall presume 
too far upon the indifference of the public to 
affairs of state. Germany and Italy, battling 
for state independence of ecclesiastical control, 
need have no fear that the doctrine of Papal 
supremacy will be suffered to intrench itself 
behind Church independence in the United 
States. 

§ 5. American Nationality against Church 
Prerogative. — This assurance is based upon the 
inherent nationality of the American people as 
this has developed under more than two cen- 
turies and a half. There are publicists in 
Europe who persist in regarding the political 
life of the American people as an experiment ; 
and there are ethnologists who look upon their 
national life as an embryo, which, in its nascent 
or plastic state, is yet to be shaped by the influ- 
ence of foreign immigration ; the very being of 
American society to be moulded by influences 
from England, Ireland, and Germany. But 



148 CHURCH AND STATE 

nothing could be more contrary to the facts of 
history and science than such surmises. 

The organic life of the American nation, 
indeed, is but little more than two and a half 
centuries ; but the founders of American society 
carried with them all the fruits of civilization 
from what was then the foremost race of Chris- 
tendom. Moreover, the confederation of the 
New-England Colonies, by which they declared, 
that " as in nation and religion, so in other 
respects, we be and continue one," — this league 
of Englishmen in America for civil liberty and 
the Protestant faith was older than the peace 
of Westphalia, by which the Holy Roman 
Empire received its death-blow, and the foun- 
dation was laid for a new Germany. The up- 
rising of New England for Protestant liberty in 
1689 preceded by twelve years the erection of 
Prussia into a kingdom ; and the final uprising 
of all the Colonies for liberty and independence 
was contemporary with the peaceful consolida- 
tion of Prussia in the closing years of Frederic 
the Great. 

If nationality is determined by an original 
race-stock sufficiently positive and vigorous to 



IN THE UNITED STATES. ' 149 

assimilate all foreign elements with its own in- 
dividuality, then America has a nationality. If 
this is determined by one language speaking 
through the laws, through the press, through 
the schools, through the pulpit, and compelling 
the homage of all native dialects and all for- 
eign tongues, then America has a nationality 
through the noble speech of Shakspeare, of 
Milton, and of Burke, — a language rich in the 
traditions of liberty, and whose literature 
breathes more of the spirit of humanity, of 
freedom, and of Christianity, than any other of 
the tongues of men. If a literature is a mark 
of nationality, America has this in poets, 
preachers, philosophers, novelists, historians, of 
indigenous growth, whose names are house- 
hold words at home, and whose works are 
sought for libraries abroad. If a history gives 
the stamp of nationality, then the history of the 
American people, marking the progress of the 
same ideas, and illustrious with successful wars 
of principle, is not an outline of political and 
social theories, but the history of a nation, with 
its talismanic legends and heroes. " Lexington 
is none the worse to me for not being in 



150 CHURCH AND STATE . 

Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name is not 
Marathon." 

American nationality was not created by a 
constitution : it is the growth of institutions, 
or rather of principles and ideas rooted in the 
hearts of the people. The Constitution was the 
natural expression of that homogeneous nation- 
al life which had then been maturing for more 
than a century, and which prompted the sub- 
lime declaration of the preamble : " We the 
people of the United States, in order to form a 
more perfect union, establish justice, insure 
domestic tranquillity, promote the general wel- 
fare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our- 
selves and our posterity, do ordain and establish 
this Constitution for the United States of 
America." Back of the Constitution there is a 
people, back of the Union a national life ; and 
priestcraft would seek in vain to deceive the 
one, or to destroy the other. The pope can no 
more Romanize America than he could revolu- 
tionize Germany. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 151 



CONCLUSION. 

To sum up all in one word, in the United 
States religion depends upon the moral power of 
light and love, and not upon the arm of the 
law. And in this, as in other interests of socie- 
ty, freedom develops the responsibility which is 
vigilance, the activity which is life, and the 
union which is strength. Such is the solution 
of the problem of Church and State in Ameri- 
ca. But as God has not given to any man to 
possess all genius and grace in his own mind 
and person, neither has he given to any nation 
to possess all perfection in race, religion, society, 
and government. Travel in many lands, and 
acquaintance with various peoples, have taught 
me that beneath all forms and institutions flows 
the life-current of humanity ; and that in every 
hand, if only one learns to clasp it rightly, beats 
the pulse of brotherhood. But nowhere have I 



152 CHURCH AND STATE 

so felt the thrill of this common life as upon 
the soil of Germany in 1866, and now again in 
1873. The conflicts of Germany for her national 
unity and her spiritual independence stir the 
heart of an American like watchwords from his 
own Heimath. And is not the voice, the spirit, 
the life, common to both countries ? Says Free- 
man, " The institutions which were once com- 
mon to the whole Teutonic race contain the 
germs out of which every free constitution in 
the world has grown." * Those ancient free 
institutions have held their own in England ; 
and America has inherited them divested of la- 
ter appendages. And German and American, 
pointing proudly back to the free spirit of a 
common ancestry, can say, " Our ancient history 
is the possession of the liberal, who, as being 
ever ready to reform, is the true conservative ; 
not of the self-styled conservative, who, by 
refusing to reform, does all he can to bring on 
destruction." It is the revival of the old Teu- 
tonic spirit of conservative progress that has 
made Germany the astonishment of Europe 

* Freeman : Growth of the English Constitution. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 153 

and the admiration of America. May God 
grant to her to solve peaceably the grayest 
problem of modern society ! — How shall the 
State give liberty without losing it in the very 
act of giving it ? 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX L — Page 119. 

THE AMERICAN THANKSGIVING. 

Thanksgiving, as a yearly festival for the ingath- 
ering of the harvest, was instituted by the Pilgrims 
soon after the settlement of Plymouth. Ifc was imi- 
tated by the other Colonies of New England, and 
for a long time was known as the New-England 
festival. By degrees, its obvious propriety, and its 
happy associations as a family feast, caused it to be 
adopted in other parts of the country. At length, 
during the late war, President Lincoln exalted it to 
a national festival ; and as such it is now welcomed 
over all the land. Special days of thanksgiving 
were also observed upon memorable occasions ; and it 
is an interesting fact, that, in 1632, the government of 
Massachusetts twice appointed a public thanksgiving 

157 



158 APPENDIX. 

for the successes of the Protestants in Germany under 
Gustavus Adolphus. 

The yearly Thanksgiving is no sectional festival. 
So abundant are the fruits of the land, so diversified 
the products of the several States, that each and all 
have cause for thanksgiving without jealousy of 
others. It is no sectarian observance. Whatever 
God is acknowledged and worshipped, — the God of 
Christian or of Jew,, of the philosophical Deist, 
or of the believer in a supernatural revelation, — 
every man's God, even " Nature " herself, may be 
thanked and praised in such a festival, as the source 
of all good. It is a household festival, which gath- 
ers around it the fond ties of family union, the 
blessed memories of the sainted dead, the tokens of 
parental and of filial love. The gray hairs of age, the 
roses of youth, the buds of infancy, are woven to- 
gether in its crown, — the evergreen remembrances of 
the past, the fresh-blooming hopes of the future. 
The Anglo-Saxon race is rooted in the home. 

This is a feast of brotherhood. Good-feeling 
abounds, and shows itself in caring for the needy, 
the widow, the orphau. Every hospital, every poor- 
house, every mission-station, shares in the festival : 
even the prisoner is cheered on this day with some 
relaxation of his confinement, some remembrance 
from the outside world. 



APPENDIX. 159 

It is a festival of devotion, which recalls men from 
their own labors, and from all the wondrous opera- 
tions of Nature, hack to the God and Father of all, 
from whom cometh every good and every perfect gift. 
Unsectional, unsectarian, uniting the three chief 
elements of society, — home, humanity, religion, — 
this festival may well stand before the world as a 
picture of American character and life. 



160 APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX II. — Page 143. 

THE GERMAN POPULATION EST THE UNITED STATES. 

[In the summer of 1872, the author read before the Geograph- 
ical Society of Berlin a paper on the Physical Geography of the 
United States as a Moment for National Unity. Some allusions 
in that paper to the number and the influence of the German 
population led to a discussion, in consequence of which the au- 
thor prepared for the society a second paper, the substance of 
which is given in this Appendix.] 

It is a common notion that the increase of popula- 
tion in the United States is chiefly from European 
immigration. For instance, in the popular Geogra- 
phy of Daniel one reads, " The number of inhab- 
itants in the United States, which is steadily 
increased by emigration from Europe, reaches nearly 
forty million. Of these, five million are colored, and 
over thirty million white, of which about one-third 
are German." One-third; that is, ten millions Ger- 
mans ! So far Daniel's Geography. But what is the 
fact ? The census for 1870 returns only 1,690,533 



APPENDIX. 161 

native Germans. To these should be added, for the 
children of German parents and of German and 
American parents now living in the United States, 
3,300,000 ; giving for the total German element, pure 
and mixed, about 5,000,000. 

The census gives a grand total of 10,892,015 per- 
sons now living in the United States, whose parents, 
one or both, were of foreign birth. But about one- 
half of these are children of English-speaking par- 
ents, and the remainder grow up with the English 
language and with American ideas ; and their chil- 
dren will lose almost all trace of a foreign ancestry. 
Hence neither the language nor the race-stock of 
the American people is likely to be seriously im- 
paired by immigration. 

By the census of 1870, the whole number of per- 
sons of foreign birth in the United States is 5,566,- 
546. These are classified by nationalities as fol- 
lows : England, 550,924 ; Scotland, 140,835 ; Wales, 
74,533; Ireland, 1,855,827; Germany, 1,690,533; 
France, 116,402 ; Spain, 3,764 ; Italy, 17,157; Swe- 
den and Norway, 211,578 ; other countries of Eu- 
rope, 180,646; British America, 492,195; China, 
63,100; all others, 308,938. But the previous 
census of 1860 showed, that, in the forty years pre- 
ceding (that is, from 1820 to 1860), the number of 
immigrants to the United States was 5,062,414 : of 
11 



162 APPENDIX. 

these Great Britain furnished 2,750,874, and Ger- 
many 1,546,476. In the ten years from 1860 to 
1870, the period of the war, the total immigration 
was less by 342,105 than in the decade from 1850 
to 1860. The ratio of German immigration has 
gained somewhat upon the Irish ; but, during the 
last decade, the rate of mortality among male adults 
was much increased by the war, in which the Ger- 
mans bore an honorable part. The number of per- 
sons living in the United States in 1870, who were 
born in foreign countries, is barely half a million 
more than the whole number of immigrants from 
1820 to 1860. In the fifty years from 1820 to 1870, 
about two millions of the registered immigrants have 
disappeared by death or return. 

Mr. Louis Schade has put forth the theory that 
the native stock of the United States is declining in 
productiveness, and that the rate of increase among 
the foreign population is fast gaining upon it. Dr. 
Frederic Kapp, whose opinion is entitled to great 
respect, has adopted the same theory. But Mr. 
Edward Jarvis, in "The Atlantic Monthly " for 
April, 1872, from a mathematical analysis of the best 
tables, has demonstrated that this theory of Schade 
was based upon inaccurate data ; that the natural 
increase is at a lower rate in the foreign than in the 
American families ; and that, in the whole white popu- 



APPENDIX. 163 

lation, the purely American element exceeds seventy 
per cent. This is, perhaps, an over-estimate. 

The first official census of the United States was 
in 1790 ; and a careful comparison of the census of 
1870 gives the following result : — 

Native-born descendants from the population of 1790, 62 per cent. 
(Of these forty-nine per cent are whites, and thir- 
teen per cent colored. ) 
Native-born from foreign parents . . . . 24 " 

Total of native born 86 " 

Foreign born . . 14 " 

This gives in the whole population five of native 
stock to three of foreign and the children of 'foreign, 
nine of the same stock to two of foreign birth, and 
six born upon the soil of the United States, of every 
parentage, to one born in foreign lands. Moreover, 
all the influences of climate, of society, of education, 
of language, of intermarriage, combine to Ameri- 
canize the children of immigrants ; and the quali- 
ties of the dominant race prevail, in the end, above 
all mixtures and crossings. A foreign people, — as, 
for instance, the Cubans or the Mexicans, — if an- 
nexed bodily to the United States, might perpetuate 
their race, their language, and their customs, to the 
prejudice of American ideas and institutions, and, per- 



164 APPENDIX. 

haps, to the peril of American unity. Such annexa- 
tion is of doubtful policy. In immigration; however, 
the process is not one of annexation, but of absorp- 
tion ; and, thus far, " Uncle Sam " is proved to have a 
digestion strong enough for a very mixed diet. Im- 
migrants are not taken up by nations nor by ship- 
loads, but each particular immigrant is absorbed as a 
separate molecule, and thus the vast total of the 
foreign element is fused into the body politic in har- 
mony with the life of the national organism. 

If one takes into account the facility with which 
this cosmopolitan nation appropriates foreign ele- 
ments, and the vital force by which it assimilates 
them all, it will appear that the Americans have 
hardly less of race unity than the English, — the 
outcome of so many immigrations and invasions, con- 
fusing diverse foreign peoples with the primitive 
island stock, till at last, after the Norm an conquest, 
all elements were fused into the English nation. 
Eor the United States are neither, like Austria, an 
agglomeration, nor, like Turkey, a conglomeration, of 
different nationalities, nor, like the Roman empire, 
a union of races effected through the pressure of 
conquest and annexation ; but the individual forms 
of these numerous and various foreign elements are 
fused with the mass of the original metal ; and, 
though the process may leave much slag, the mass 



APPENDIX. 165 

retains enough of its original character readily to 
identify its nature and source. 

As the English Colonies in North America by 
degrees supplanted the Spanish, French, and Dutch 
settlements, and either exterminated or absorbed 
them, there came to be in the whole land a prepon- 
derating English stock, which, through its spirit, its 
ideas, its institutions, and indeed through the quality 
of its blood, impressed its features and character 
upon the young and growing nation ; and hence 
the American race of to-day, however modified 
through foreign mixture and by the nerve-properties 
of climate, is only a sprout of the Anglo-Saxon 
stock, which, all fresh and vigorous, asserts its Dar- 
winian right to exist. The argument for national 
identity derived from race has certainly as much 
weight for the people of the United States as for 
the people of Spain. 

The Visigoths, to the number of many hundred 
thousands, overran Spain, and, for more than two 
centuries, held the country as conquerors ; and, 
though they were conquered in turn, they were never 
expelled. Yet, while their influence may be traced 
in that corruption of the Latin which preceded the 
formation of the Spanish tongue, and their blood 
miugles in the veins of multitudes of Spaniards, the 
German character was not stamped upon the Spanish 



166 APPENDIX. 

race. The conquering race was fused into the con- 
quered. Much less will the modern invasion of 
America by Germany efface the characteristics of 
the American people. Acting like a transfusion by 
vivisection, it may bring out in a more pronounced 
type the primitive atavism of both varieties; but 
in a few generations the descendants of the German- 
Americans of to-day will obey the laws of race, of 
history, and of destiny, and become, in language, in 
manners, in ideas, and also in physique and physiog- 
nomy, Americans. 

Americans would be sorry to estimate the average 
intelligence and culture of the German people by the 
bulk of German immigrants. Many of these are 
slow to comprehend two characteristics which are 
deeply fixed in the American stock, and which have 
given strength and stability to American institutions, 
— reverence for the authority of law, and ' respect for 
the teachings and the usages of religion. In the 
main, however, the German element mixes well with 
the American ; and it is highly valued on account 
of the industry and thrift of the lower classes, and of 
the cultivation in science, literature, and art, so often ' 
found in the higher. 



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